In this lesson we will apply three of the theories of moral reasoning to the dilemma in the Merck case. [MUSIC] In this part of the module, we're going to return to the Merck case and talk about moral reasoning, and how that helped Merck think through this case. First of all, what are the facts? Well, we know the facts. These are cultures, here's a picture of part one culture, and how they live and how these people live, and how poor they are. And then we note, we've learned the ethical issues already, right? Developing the drug is expensive, might not work, might harm people, might be bad publicity if somebody is harmed. It would be terrible, if you can imagine. Not developing the drug, again, bad publicity. Someone finds out and they will. There are no secrets from the media, as you know. Low morale of these researchers who were pretty sure this is going to work, and missed opportunity to help 30 to 100 million people. That's a lot of people. Giving rise to the other organization, Merck would lose his patent. They're probably not, they're not going to do that. Let's be sure. Frankly, they're not. They didn't do that. So should they do this? Should they use funds for other drugs, or should they encourage another company to take on this project? What rights are at stake here, and what is the most fair? Intuitively, it would appear that developing the drug is the right thing to do. But from a cost/benefit analysis, you're really not so sure because there are plenty of other people. I don't know how many people have cancer, but at least 100 million people, globally. Probably more. We can look that up. How many people have HIV? Well, we know in Africa, 30 million people alone are infected with that HIV, and that's only one continent. So there's just lots and lots of places where Merck could help people and actually be profitable as well. And then of course, the problem of testing. There's always a problem of testing a drug. Terrible, because it doesn't always turn out right. And in fact, a lot of the times it doesn't turn out right, and so you have to go on and do something else. So there's the issue of negative publicity and then the moral of the researchers. That turns out to be really important for Merck because in a pharmaceutical company, the most important people are your researchers. If you don't have good researchers and they're not developing new drugs, because since it takes forever, ten to 20 years, you're out of business, obviously. You've got to have great researchers and you've got to have some drugs in the pipeline or you will be, company no more. Now Merck has lasted over 100 years. And one of the reasons they've lasted is that researchers love to work there. They really like that company, and that makes a huge difference in competition. Now, if Merck develops or either way, develops or doesn't develop this drug, it sets a precedent. Because Merck is one of the admired company. So it sets a precedent for the other companies, are they going to do this or not do it? And then of course, what would a virtuous company do? You'd probably say, they develop it, right? And then, of course, we have the vision of the founder, and that's always sort of in the background, in the heads of everyone at Merck. They don't really forget. So, here we back again to where we are. What kinds of arguments do we develop for the decision? [MUSIC]