The Business Ethics Blog

From the NY Times: Kellogg to Phase Out Some Food Ads to Children

Froot Loops’ days on Saturday morning television may be numbered.
The Kellogg Company said yesterday that it would phase out advertising its products to children under age 12 unless the foods meet specific nutrition guidelines for calories, sugar, fat and sodium.
Kellogg also announced that it would stop using licensed characters or branded toys to promote foods unless the products meet the nutrition guidelines.

The change is apparently an attempt to fend off lawsuits:

The policy changes come 16 months after Kellogg and Viacom, the parent company of Nickelodeon, were threatened with a lawsuit over their advertising to children by two advocacy groups, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, and two Massachusetts parents.

Even so, this move puts Kellog out in front of an industry that has generally done too little to self-regulate.

See also this blog entry from last year: Ethics of Advertising Bad Food to Kids.

I’ve never understood why any human being over 8 years old would want to wear these things, though I’ve been willing to concede that if (if!) they have some orthopedic value, then I’ll make an exception for, say, nurses and people with back problems.

Now it turns out that Crocs aren’t just ugly (really, really ugly) but also possibly dangerous:

From Maclean’s: The shocking truth about Crocs: Why some hospitals are moving toward a ban on the colourful foam clog

An increasing number of hospitals and health centres are moving toward banning Crocs and Crocs knock-offs from their facilities for fear the shoes have endangered both patients and staff. The main offenders appear to be the popular Beach and Cayman models, which have holes on top, side vents and a back strap rather than a closed heel. They allegedly have been responsible for infection control hazards because bodily fluids such as blood have spilled into the holes. Staff have reportedly twisted ankles because of the open back. And staff reaction times are said to be compromised because it’s suspected that clogs are more difficult to run in than traditional hospital footwear. The most heinous charge against Crocs and similar shoes is that they act as “isolators,” enabling enough static electricity to be generated to knock out medical equipment — including respirators in maternity wards.

The manufacturers, naturally, deny the static electricity problem. No word yet on whether they’ll plead guilty to the charge of ugly.

From the NY Times: After Sanctions, Doctors Get Drug Company Pay

Summary:
The NYT story is about physicians who, despite having been sanctioned either by professional regulatory groups or by courts, continue to be employed by drug companies.

A decade ago the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice accused Dr. Faruk Abuzzahab of a “reckless, if not willful, disregard” for the welfare of 46 patients, 5 of whom died in his care or shortly afterward. The board suspended his license for seven months and restricted it for two years after that.
But Dr. Abuzzahab, a Minneapolis psychiatrist, is still overseeing the testing of drugs on patients and is being paid by pharmaceutical companies for the work. At least a dozen have paid him for research or marketing since he was disciplined.

Rant:
There is a reason why Medicine is (supposedly) a “profession,” rather than simply an “industry.” And there’s a reason why the pharmaceutical industry is (supposedly) highly-regulated.

It’s because pharmaceuticals, and health care more generally, are the kinds of products it is very, very hard for consumers to evaluate. There’s an enormous information asymmetry between the people buying and the people selling these goods and services. Such goods and services fit very poorly the model of effficient free-market transactions between fully-informed buyers and sellers. Trust is therefore essential. Setting up systems such that trust is warranted is not easy.

With regard to physicians, our solution has been to allow them to form self-regulating, self-licensing associations, groups that devise, adopt, and inculcate shared ethical values and then enforce them. Thus, patients are supposed to be able to trust doctors because doctors are part of a profession with a set of shared values that includes “putting the patient first.”

For drug companies, the solution has been to regulate them. Give the government control over what drugs are safe enough, and effective enough, to put on the market. And then further, entrust physicians with the power to act as trusted gatekeepers for the most potent drugs (i.e., prescription drugs).

I have enormous, enormous personal respect for the many physicians (and other health professionals) who work tirelessly to benefit their patients. I also have enormous respect for the many people working inside pharmaceutical companies who truly want to be part of an industry whose goal is to produce medicines to improve people’s lives. But stories like this one point to a need both for tighter self-regulation by the medical profession, and for tougher (and better funded) regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.
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Thanks to Bryn at Genethics.ca