TUTORIAL 3

Answer the following questions.

Read the article to answer the questions.

A professor needing funding for her medical research on the causes and cures for a
disease accepted a large, multi-year grant from a pharmaceutical company. The
research tested the efficacy of medicines currently on the market, including a
medicine produced by the pharmaceutical company. The research results suggested
that the pharmaceutical company's medicine did have a positive effect, but the
research also contained some ambiguous data that could be interpreted as
demonstrating that the medicine has a negative side effect on some patients. As a
condition of the grant, the professor was required to submit a preliminary draft of
the report to the pharmaceutical company, for review and feedback. The professor
submitted the report as required, and the pharmaceutical company wrote back to ask
whether the professor would consider deleting the ambiguous data, as it may reflect
badly on the pharmaceutical company and it is not strong data to begin with. The
professor has reached the end of the grant funding, and to continue the research
would need to get additional funding, with one obvious source of funding being the
pharmaceutical company.

1) Analyse the ethical issues in the case above through the perspective of each of the
following ethical philosophies: relativism, utilitarianism and deontology.