Ethical Culture at TAP Pharmaceuticals

Ethical Culture at TAP Pharmaceuticals 1
Ethical Culture at TAP Pharmaceutical
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Ethical Culture at TAP Pharmaceuticals 2
Ethical Culture at TAP Pharmaceuticals.
Ethics refer to the moral expectation of for an individual or an organization (Bowie, 2017). The
topic of ethics has become very important in modern society (Kagan, 2018). Ethical misconduct
in the pharmaceutical industry has been on the rise (Parker-Lue, Santoro and Koski, 2015). The
ethical culture at TAP is a good example. The ethical culture at TAP pharmaceuticals was a huge
threat to human life and the economy. Their systems were aligned to support unethical culture.
Unlike Douglas Durand's previous workplace Merck and Company, TAP pharmaceuticals
indulged in unlawful practices such as illegal sale of drugs, unethical practices when dealing
with drugs and defrauding the government. Douglas Durand came to realize that the only
element that mattered in TAP pharmaceuticals was numbers.
TAP Pharmaceuticals had no in-house legal counsel. The officials pushed their products to the
sales field before they were evaluated by a legal and regulatory team. Here, the legal counsel was
done away with as they perceived it could prevent or lower their sales. It was therefore
considered to be a sales prevention department. As if that was not enough, TAP pharmaceuticals
often gave bribes to doctors and physicians who administered or gave their new drug called
Lupron to prostate cancer patients. The doctors were also given discounted samples of the drug
by the company’s sales representatives. They charged full consultancy and drug administration
prices as they were advised by the TAP pharmaceuticals officials.
The doctors administering Lupron were well showered with incentives. These included huge
screen televisions, boats, and equipment to be used in the office and golf vacations. These were
meant to keep the urologists motivated to perform their dirty work. The sales officials from TAP
pharmaceuticals were not accounting for the free drug samples they gave to the urologists as the