Unethical Business Research

Unethical Business Research

Donna Eastwood

June 10, 2013

The business of engaging in unethical research practices is something that has grown over the past decade or two. Businesses are trying to compete with each other in a highly competitive world where you could be on top today and out of business tomorrow. To try and keep up in this fast paced society some managers will rely on unethical business practices. One of these is business research.

When looking at the way the world is today, it is not a surprise when we hear of a company using unethical tactics to either stay ahead or just to simply put more money into the CEOs pockets. A company can get away with using these unethical tactics for a while but usually get caught eventually. Such was the case with GlaxoSmithKline a pharmaceutical company.

In the early summer of 2012 GlaxoSmithKline was found guilty of unlawful promotion of prescription drugs, failure to report certain safety data, false price reporting, and alleged false reporting practices (Belkin, 2012). After being convicted of these crimes GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay three billion to resolve its criminal and civil liability. However, even though they were made to pay billions of dollars, the harm was already done.

The research done on the products sold by GlaxoSmithKline was shoddy and not thoroughly prepared so that by the time the product information hit stores it was misbranded. This means that the company was saying the product would do something that it either was not tested for or did not do in tests. Information handed down from management to production was wrong. The drugs were mislabeled and therefore should not have gone to pharmacies and then to patients homes.

The drugs in question were Paxil and Wellbutrin. For five years GlaxoSmithKline was selling these drugs to pharmacies with flyers saying that the drugs would help children, assist with weight loss, substance abuse, and other things along with what they were produced for which is depression. Problem was the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) hadn't approved the drugs for anything other than depression.

When a company does something like this, especially a pharmaceutical company who is in control of drugs people take for their wellbeing, everyone suffers. GlaxoSmithKline let society down in general. They were lucky that no one filed a law suit against them for falsifying the information packets in with the drugs. They could have seriously harmed or even killed people with their lack of responsibility.

Because of what GlaxoSmithKline did the company has had to pay billions in liability claims. This can cause the company to have to lay off workers and possibly slow production of medications. There should definitely be