Are drug companies pure evil?

[even sven]

I have always wondered about this hypothetical situation. Take a disease, like AIDS, that is expensive as hell to treat. Drug campanies are making lots and lots of money from the medication required for treatment. Now lets say that in the upper eschelons of a drug company, they figure out that it can be cured by eating the bark of an oak tree. Because they cannot figure out anyway to charge for that, they keep their findings secret.
Would they really do that? Is that ethical (after all it is capitalism at work)? Has something like that ever happened before?

[matt_mcl]

I can't believe you even asked that second question. Of course it's not ethical, sit on their asses and let millions die slowly for their profit.

I don't care if it is business. Businesspeople are as ethically praise- or blameworthy as anyone. They don't step into some alternate dimension when they go to work. They don't stop being society members. And dammit, if I found out something like this was going on, I'd probably do something drastic.

Well, no, I wouldn't... I'd probably write a letter to the government. But it would be a really nasty letter! Full of profanity! Yeah!

...Ok, we've established that I shouldn't post when high.

[Danielinthewolvesden]

They aren't "evil". What they would do is isolate & then figure out how to make in the lab. (it would be purer, w/ a std dose, so they are performing some benefit). THEN they would sell it for $$$$$$

[even sven]

But what if they couldn't purify it or standardize it? Just walking up to an oak tree and eating a piece of its bark is the cure. There would be no way to make money off it, and the scientists that discovered it have a large economic stake in the company. I also have issues with Matt's comment about businessmen. I am sure that plenty of businesses have killed or allowed people to die for econimic benefits. Lord knows plenty of countries have done the same to create a "favorable economic climate". So, have I found the flaw in capitalism?

[DoctorJ]

They don't step into some alternate dimension when they go to work. They don't stop being society members.

Yes they do--they become a corporation.

The rules are different for a corporation--it is not in place to save people's lives, it is not there to make society a better place, it is there to make money for its shareholders. Everything else is secondary to the corporation. As such, that drug company would say that while they regret the lives lost due to their failure to make this information known, they had a responsibility to their shareholders to keep it quiet.

And what do you do to a corporation that behaves unethically? Put it in jail? How? Put its board of directors in jail? Not bloody likely. Revoke its charter? Don't count on it. You can only fine the corporation, an expense gladly passed on to the customer.

Of course, if we were dealing with an ideal free market, the consumers would simply not give their business to such a corporation. However, with such a rift between the top and the bottom, it's hard to be an informed consumer on every choice you make. Also, this drug company might be the only one making this drug, so it's their way or the highway.

Bottom line--in the long run, pure, unregulated capitalism works a little better than pure socialism, but not much.

Dr. J

------------------
"Seriously, baby, I can prescribe anything I want!" -Dr. Nick Riviera

[lswote]

Well unless they successfully squelch the story of the bark curing aids, and I mean squelch it completely, ultimately it will come back to bite them in the ass. Look at what happened when the Exxon Valdez spilled oil off Alaska, people boycotted Exxon products and Exxon was very affected.

Successfully squelching a story is not easy. Murder people and you got bodies. Bribe people and they come back to the well again sometime in the future for more. Even if they squelch the dissidents, eventually someone on the inside will turncoat to cover his ass and the story will get out. And there will be repercusions. That is the strength of capitalism. The protection against the greedy and uncompassionate is the secrets are hard to keep and anytime the truth is known, the affected can make a difference by boycott products.

------------------
Let's See What's Out There ... Engage

The world's loneliest doper.

[Sterra]

all they would have to do is take the bark and sell it.

Seed corporattions sell genetically engineered seeds so you have to keep on buying from them. And lightbulb companys could make lights that last forever.

[Keenan]

Lightbulb companies DO make longer-lasting lights. They charge more for them, but your long-run cost is lower, since you don't need to replace the bulbs as often. Now, there is a quite a bit of consumer inertia that they have to overcome ("Ten dollars for a freakin' lightbulb?") because people don't always do the math, but that's not a good example of "evil corporations hiding advances from us."

Now, if you're talking about the pill that lets cars run on tap water, now we're talking.

(Reverse-engineered from UFOs, dontcha know.)

[divemaster]

As far as "greedy drug companies" go, without the profit motive, why should they go out of their way to develop cures and medicines that significantly improve one's quality of life?

Sure, one might think that altruism would lead a person to do that, but not a corporation. And I think most charitable organizations don't have nearly enough money to fund decades of research, testing and development of a drug.

For every drug that turns out to be effective and make it onto the market, how many do you think crap out, even after spending tons of money on them? I don't know the answer but I would guess quite a lot.

So I don't mind at all that drug companies make a profit. Someone has to pay for all those years of science and research. Remember, what may seem like an obscene profit for one medicine actually has to cover a lot things that go on behind the scenes.

I'm glad Eli Lilly et al. have some motivation for medicine development. Imagine what the state of health care would be if they did not.

[Gilligan]

“The rules are different for a corporation--it is not in place to save people's lives, it is not there to make society a better place, it is there to make money for its shareholders.”

I’m wondering, are these things what people are here for? What should happen to an individual who discovers a cheap and easy cure for cancer, and doesn’t share it with the world. I would agree it would be unethical, but is it criminal?

[Mr.Zambezi]

I am sure that plenty of businesses have killed or allowed people to die for econimic benefits

I would like to see an example.

Speaking as a corporate dog whose job is to 'protect and increase corporate assets":

It costs a fortune to create name recognition. Bad press not only destroys earnings, the subsequent dip in earnings spawns numerous lawsuites against the Directors and Officers of the company.

I recently figured out the cost of bad national press coverage regarding our product and it would bankrupt us. Period. Even if a company is running at a 5% profit Margin, a 20% dip in cash flow will cause severe damage and probably sink us.

So even if we turn into Ferengi (sp?) as soon as we step in the office, we have an economic reason to act ethically. This is the beauty of the free market. It regulates itself. (But we are a bunch of good hearted family men for the most part.)

So it doesn't have to be criminal to not report such a cure. The company would report the findings anyway or face the consequences.

[casdave]

The closest I've seen in real life to this kind of scenario is when an Australian researcher discovered the major cause of stomach ulcers a certain bacteria.

I think I could spell the name of it but why put myself up to be shot at?

Anyway ,the documentary about this chap implied that the reason that big drug companies did not have any interest in carrying out confirming research was that they were making lots of money out of drugs like Tagamel and that the cure used drugs that were well past the patent limitations.

Further to that it seems that these antacid drugs were near the end of their patent lives and when that happened then the real cure would be promoted more.

The treatment discovered by the Australian is now widely used and ,if I remember rightly, the bug he discovered has been implcated in stomach cancer.When the bug was treated some people with this cancer actually recovered.

I sometimes wonder about who promotes the benefits of prozac and the attention deficit disorder drugs.There must be huge profits in that business right, the way down to the GP.

[Gilligan]

You are talking about Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, who discovered that ulcers were caused by the helicobacter pylori organism, which was at odds with the accepted medical knowledge of the time (1982), which said that stress was the main cause. Like any other drastic departure from the common knowledge, it's acceptance in the medical community took time, but was pretty much the standard by the 1990's, and is now considered a great discovery. I'm not sure who funded their research; I would like to have seen that documentary. I've never heard or seen it stated that drug companies were behind the initial reluctance of the medical community. That would be quite a conspiracy.

[Sentinel]

One thing I have painfully learned over the years is that since the 60s, American Business has changed. The simple, flat statement; the cold, hard explanation mouthed so often by firm faced, overconfident looking executives: 'it's just business.

Yes, I believe that most major drug companies, at least the decision making body, have turned, if not 'evil' to profit oriented, ruthless selfishness where human lives no longer matter -- unless for the potential of lawsuits.

The trend became obvious with Disney. So long as Walt Disney was alive, he kept prices low, believing in fun for all and you never heard of 'Disney' suing anyone unless it was real serious. Walt died. Disney became 'Disney Inc.' and a day care center was sued because they had painted Disney cartoons on their walls without getting permission or paying royalties.

The major drug companies discovered that Americans were using more drugs, no longer willing to suffer stoically with curable or controllable diseases as in the past. They spent millions on research -- often getting government grants to help pay the costs -- and introduced new drugs. The rule of thumb used to be that the initial introduction of the medication was high, but within a year, the cost would drop once the companies made back their expenses.

Someone decided 'why kill the cow' so long as major bucks were still flowing in? Medication prices then either dropped only minimally oor not at all. Then, the blind herd that is the general public started investing in drug companies, spotting the high profit pictures, which encouraged said companies to increase their prices.

Currently, drug companies are among the wealthiest businesses in the States. Most recoup their initial costs within 3 years of putting a new medication on sale. Viagra is not expensive to make, but since so many men are real concerned about the function of their wee willie's, it is a guaranteed money maker. Made for under $0.20 a pill, it sells for $10.00 each! (I made an error in a previous post about the cost.)

Drug companies have grants to find cures for AIDS, but dying people desperately trying to find a way to live longer, or be free of misery as they die, or seeking a cure will gladly pay all they have for medication. The drug companies are making a fortune off of AIDS patients. At $100 a dosage for some AIDS drugs, the patients need at least 4 to 16 doses a month, which equals, at the maximum, $1600. Yearly, this comes to $19,200.

Now, multiply that by around a million patients, or more. MAJOR BUCKS from 'captive' users.

The rule of thumb, I learned, in retail business, is to increase the purchase price of an item by 100% to sell it. If the item sells very well, then increase it to what the market will bear. (CDs cost less to make than the old vinyl albums, but are sold at up to 3 times the vinyl cost because the public readily pays it.)

Businesses tend to remove themselves from human emotions. Business concerning profit and expansion becomes all. I've known many a fine person who I've had dealings with socially and enjoyed their company, and they would give you the shirt off of their backs -- until they turned to 'business', then you had to buy the shirt. The more you needed it, the more it cost. If you also were in the business of selling shirts, they would deliberately bankrupt you to gain a higher share of the market, even though your kids played with theirs, you had each other over for meals and got drunk together.

JUST BUSINESS.

The most evil phrase currently in the world today.

I examined the new Excedrine Migraine pain reliever, that sells for several dollars more than the Excedrine Extra Strength pills, for the same amount of tablets. The only difference between the two is that the migraine pills are coated with a wax to retard digestion -- which means they'll dissolve mainly in the intestines and more of the basic medication will survive the destructive effects of the stomach acid. PLUS, many migraine sufferers tend to get upset stomachs, so the wax will keep the medication from churning things up there.

The result? Each 100 tablets gets a tumbled on coating of something like canuba or beeswax, probably costing a whole $0.05 per bottle. The coated tablets sell for $3 to $5 more than the uncoated.

I tell migraine sufferers to take 2, 500 mgm EXCEDRINE tablets with a drink of milk or chase them with a Rolaids tablet. It does about the same thing as the wax and saves them several dollars.

Profit, people, profit! Profit is all. Profit is power!

Antidepressants are now big business, especially those which not only work well, but have few side affects and can be used to treat multiple symptoms. If people want to feel better, they'll pay for it!

Not all that long ago, one of the major drug companies -- I forgot which one -- was involved in attempting to set up a price control scheme to keep the price of some drugs higher than normal. The government stopped them and made them pay a fine.

Years ago, most drug companies were started by the owners, who were in the drug field, saw potential in making drugs or whatever, and most felt they were not just doing good business, but providing a necessary service at a reasonable price.

These people are gone. CEO's, with enormous perks, and boards of directors -- interested only in their dividends --and power hungry executives have taken over. They don't actually care about the people using the medications. They want profit -- and there is never enough of that.

Suffering is big business.

Nothing personal, it's only business.

[astorian]

I'm reminded of a passage in Michael Crichton's novel "Jurassic Park." Rich mogul Hammond has spent billions of dollars on Cray supercomputers, and the world's most brilliant geneticists and microbiologists, all to produce dinosaurs for a theme park!

Someone wonders aloud, "Imagine if all this money and all these resources had been devoted to curing cancer or AIDS or something!"

Hammond answers, essentially, "That's a good question. I'll tell you EXACTLY why I don't do that. Suppose I devoted billions of dollars to cancer research, and eventually discovered a miracle cure. I then go on TV and announce, I've got a drug here to cure cancer- all cancer patients line up for my miracle drug, only $50,000 a shot."

"If I did that, would anyone praise me? Would anyone be grateful to me? On the contrary, they'd scream bloody murder! They'd call me a heartless fiend, gouging the sick. They'd say $50,000 is way too much money, and before long, the government would step in and tell me EXACTLY how much I could charge. My profits would be minimal, because in the modern economy... ironically, the more people need something, the more they feel entitled to it, and the less they're willing to pay."

"On the other hand, nobody NEEDS to go to a theme park and no one NEEDS to see dinosaurs. It's a luxury, which means I can charge ANY insane price I like, and people will gladly pay it, and no one will object if I make obscene profits."

This passage comes to mind in any discussion of drug prices. Drug companies make big profits by discovering and inventing useful products. But precisely BECAUSE these products are so good and so useful, people resent drug companies for making a large profit! (You bastards- I NEED that drug to stay alive, so you have no business charging me a lot of money for it!")

On the other hand, if there weren't big profits involved, so you REALLY think anyone would be hard at work looking for effective new drugs? Guess again!

[casdave]

I think the economics of research have been made pretty clear over the years.

AIDs cure if invented will be way too expensive for the nations that need them the most.
The big 3rd world killers are still the unglamorous diseases and parasites but the money invested into research is far less because the returns will not be there.
How does one raise the money for this work if the drug companies can't?

Their shareholders are you and I and I doubt you would want to take a reduced pension because of it.

The quality of life drugs such as prozac and viagra are not major medical issues in the same way that ,say, anti-biotics are but that is where the money is.

How did our parents ever manage to cope without them?
Maybe we have created such a hideous world that we actually need stuff like this, seems to me we might benefit by taking time out for a rethink.
Employment is high ,wages relatively so, lifespans are longer and healthier yet still we need happy pills which the drug companies are only too willing to sell us.

[DoctorJ]

If I may draw a parallel...

As a physician (to-be), I am required by law to at least see and stabilize anyone in a life-threatening situation, even if they cannot pay me one dime. I don't have to provide any sort of non-emergent or long-term care, and "stabilization" might just be enough to get them to the hospital. Bottom line, I can't let someone die just because they can't pay me.

This is in spite of the fact that I have spent many years of my life and upwards of $150,000 in training to be a physician.

On the other hand, let's say someone has a life-threatening illness that is curable only by a single drug, which is patented by DrugCorp, Inc. and costs upwards of $1000 a dose. He does not have any money whatsoever. To my knowledge, the drug company is not at all required to provide the drug. (In reality, a state agency would probably help the person pay for the drug, but this is a hypothetical.)

How do the situations differ?

Dr. J

[Ptahlis]

Should a company discover that oak trees cure AIDS or something like that, they would probably quietly buy interest in logging firms and then score an enormous PR coup by announcing their results.

This question reminds me of a similar opinion voiced by one curmudgeon I know who thinks everything's a conspiracy. He doesn't believe in organizations like the American Cancer Society because he is convinced that they already know an easy way to cure cancer but won't because it will put them all out of work. So they spend their time coming up with expensive and dubious treatments to keep themselves salaried.

"I know Darth Vader's really got you annoyed,
But remember if you kill him then you'll be unemployed."- Weird Al, "Yoda"

[egkelly]

Some of the attitudes expressed in this thread are common to those who like to criticize, but never (themselves) use logic or common reasoning skills. These attitudes are common to people like Ralph Nader (the evil car companies), Greenpeace (the evil nuclear power companies), and other such nutbag groups. Drug companies are in business TO MAKE A PROFIT!-simple -isn't it? Drug companies that fail to earn profits go out of business. Developing new drugs is a HUGELY costly business-in no small part because of the legal industry (which is constantly looking for ways to extort money from the drug companies). I used to own stock in a pharmaceutical company-they went bankrupt paying for the FDA approvals!-itliterally takes years to get a new drug tested and approved!
One curious fact-the old Soviet Union had large numbers of medical scientists, and excellent research labs-yet they NEVER came up with a single imp[ortant drug! I guess the profit principal just MIGHT have something to to with this?

[threemae]

I agree entirely with you EGKelly, Dr. J, et al. For all of these people that bitch about how evil greed is, none of them can seem to get of their protesting-asses, go through med school, earn a Ph.D. in biological chemistry, a M.S. in viroligy, and then go find the cure for AIDS. That is true selflessness and right now, not that many people willing to give a few days of their year to protest greed are willing to do themselves whatever they want others to do for them.

[casdave]

Ralph Nader was attacked by the car manufacturers with false allegations about himself and his private life, I don't reckon that makes him a nut.
When all this emerged it gave the public an unmistakable image of what the car industry was all about.
The car industry quickly adopted and guess what, the main issue Nader raised, car safety, has become good for the car industry because safety sells.

The nuclear industry lied got pinned, lied again , got pinned and this kept repeating itself.Eventually the British industry which had lied so much was pinned over quality control issues and is now in the position of seeing the toilet bowl appearing at a rapid rate. Doesn't look like good business to me.

Is Erin Brockavitch a nut then?

Good business is about consumer confidence, why are there all these FDA controls?Could it be that the drug industry cannot be trusted?
The drug industry has brought it's licensing woes on its own head .The legal industry has used the law to prove the negligence of these companies.
The profit motive of drug companies has been so overt that they have, at times, supplied products that were not properly researched. That research may have been distorted or not comprehensive enough.
Had the drug companies adapted as quickly as the car companies did and if they had behaved with integrity earlier then these restrictions would not have to be as severe.

The aviation idustry has a saying - If you think safety is expensive then try crashing.

[JD]

There was an article in the New York Times last week about drugs that are initially financed by the taxpayer through government grants to public institutions. In many cases, taxpayers get no financial return on the investment, their only benefit being the fact that the drug simply exists to be purchased. As a result, it is often the taxpayer who takes the real risk of potential failure. The drug companies simply step in when the prospects look good and license the discovery. Sounds like corporate welfare to me.

It's no great revelation that corporations exist to make profits. But the question at the start of the thread is whether or not they are ethical. And I don't see how its illogical to state that profit making and ethical behavior are, in reality, two completely separate issues. A hit-man does his job TO MAKE A PROFIT, but that doesn't confer any morality to what he (or she) does.

JD

[tracer]

DoctorJ wrote:

quote
-----------------------------------------------------------
They don't step into some alternate dimension when they go to work. They don't stop being society members.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Yes they do--they become a corporation.

Not all of them! Some of them stay on as sole proprietorships, some of them form partnerships (some of which have one or more limited partners), some of them form those new Limited Liability Companies you're always hearing about these days, and some of them even form Massachusetts Business Trusts in states where such organizations aren't illegal. Heck, a limited partnership can even have its limited-partner interests publically traded, as though they were stock certificates!

Just a friendly reminder that "company" and "business" don't necessarily mean that someone's filed articles of incorporation somewhere.

[Gadarene]

Mr. Zambezi sez:
I would like to see an example [of "businesses (that) have killed or allowed people to die for economic benefits"].

Well, there's the Ford Pinto case, for one.

The tobacco companies.

The Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and other examples of egregious safety violations in the name of cost-cutting.

Arms manufacturers worldwide (which reminds me of Shaw's Major Barbara; gotta read that again sometime).

The Nestle formula case.

This is all off the top of my head.

I'd also strongly recommend this book, Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. It details numerous instances where businesses have concealed safety issues from the public (in petrochemicals, pesticides, etcetera) in order to preserve a profit margin.

I could go on if you like.

You were joking when you asked that question, right?

[tracer]

Gadarene wrote:

Mr. Zambezi sez:
-----------------------------------------------------------
I would like to see an example [of "businesses (that) have killed or allowed people to die for economic benefits"].
-----------------------------------------------------------

Well, there's the Ford Pinto case, for one.

The Ford Pinto was one case where the business did exactly the opposite. They did not intentionally engineer the gasoline-fill-hose mount in such a way that the hose could tear loose from it; this rather obscure defect wasn't detected by anyone, Ford Motor Company included, until the cars had been on the roads for several years. And when they discovered it, they issued an immediate recall and fixed the dangerous gas-pipe mount for free.

You make it sound like Ford was saying, "We'll make more money if we make this fuel-fill mount defective! So what if thousands will die a fiery death? Wah ha ha ha ha!"

[Gadarene]

The Ford Pinto was one case where the business did exactly the opposite. They did not intentionally engineer the gasoline-fill-hose mount in such a way that the hose could tear loose from it; this rather obscure defect wasn't detected by anyone, Ford Motor Company included, until the cars had been on the roads for several years. And when they discovered it, they issued an immediate recall and fixed the dangerous gas-pipe mount for free.

You make it sound like Ford was saying, "We'll make more money if we make this fuel-fill mount defective! So what if thousands will die a fiery death? Wah ha ha ha ha!"

Pardon my ignorance (I'm away from my reference library at the moment), but I was under the impression that in the case of the Pinto, Ford did a cost-benefit analysis and decided that the cost of any potential lawsuits arising from rear-end impact explosions would be less than the cost of recalling the cars...so they didn't recall the cars. Which, to my mind, would be a business putting profit over public safety. Now, this account conflicts with yours, tracer, and you certainly seem to know what you're talking about--anyone care to resolve this? (Or I can look it up, when I get back home.)

[Max Torque]

That reminds me of something from a book I read just before going to law school. The book was called 29 Reasons Not To Go To Law School.

At the beginning of one chapter, a former law student recalls an exercise from an environmental law class she had taken. She, of course, envisioned environmental law as a way to attack perpetrators of toxic torts and clean up the great outdoors.

The exercise had to do with an aluminum plant that faced a lawsuit for polluting a nearby river. A resident downstream claimed that the pollution had killed her child. In essence, the exercise was a cost-benefit analysis, balancing the potential cost of this and future lawsuits against the cost of changing operations to reduce or eliminate pollution.

Yeah, it goes on. And the medical field is indeed in an awkward position: their business is healing, yet it's in their best financial interest that the patient be sick as long as possible. It's not a problem with capitalism, but with medicine. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of doctors are good moral persons and take their oaths seriously.

Drug companies, however, are another matter....I'm trying to locate a report I once saw concerning a drug company making threats to a researcher who wouldn't push the company's latest "product", but I'm coming up blank. Anyway, they're companies, and they can be as cold and ruthless as any other company.

[Homer]

Not pure evil. Just a little bit evil. They are the diet Pepsi of evil. Not alot, just one calorie.

Riiiight. How about 'no', Scott?

--Tim

[pldennison]

Is Erin Brockavitch a nut then?

Actually, I was just recently reading an article which severely criticized the science and statistics in the Erin Brockovich/PGE case. And it wasn't by a corporation, but rather by a group of scientists and skeptics who question both the data and the conclusions drawn from it. If I can find it again, I'll post a link.

[Sam Stone]

Safety cost-benefit studies are a proper and moral requirement of doing business, EVEN IF the equation comes down on the side of cost. We simply cannot afford all the safety that is possible from an engineering standpoint. Cars would all be safer if they had 5-point harnesses and full roll cages, but they don't because someone did a cost-benefit analysis and decided that if they had 5-point harnesses in their cars sales would suffer dramatically.

Somewhere between the extremes of 5-point harnesses and full roll cages, and faulty fuel filler caps, there comes a dividing line at which the company should say, "We won't enact this safety feature because it costs too much, even though statistically it may cause 20 deaths."

A company that fails to do these analyses is simply negligent, both to the public and its shareholders. But in today's legal climate, woe is the company that gets sued and has one of these ethical and proper studies surface, because they'll lose billions in punitive damages. This is a simple case of the ignorance of the courts and the masses punishing technical people for actions which were correct.

People that jump up and down and say, "No death is worth any amount of profits" are simply airheaded idiots who can't think. Every human endeavour involves risk. When we build a highrise, safety engineers can say with some accuracy, "X number of people will die on this project". They do what they can to reasonably keep that number as low as possible, but they still know that one new building = X number of dead people. But the building goes up anyway, as it should.

[DrFidelius]

Sorry for coming in late, but I've been workiong a lot of hours.

Hypothetically, what if the owners of an airline discovered that people could fly just by thinking happy thoughts? Would it be evil for them to suppress this information and continue to charge their outrageous prices for airplane tickets?

I love hypothetical situations that make the world so much simpler.

The majority of research scientists in the pharmaceutical industry are good people. They are in this business rather than, say, petrochemicals because they really want to make people feel better. IF any of them discovered something along the lines of "Oak Bark Cures AIDS" it would be written up in the journals faster than you could say "Jack Robinson".

If they were fired by their heartless corporate masters, I am sure the general public would make the government give them a decent stipend. I doubt they would be fired; a cheap cure for something nasty (as long as the margin was maintained) would make major profits for the stockholders. And the marketing weasels could earn their pay by convincing the general public (who are much less pricey to persuade than doctors) that the Original And Best Oakirol was the only one worth using.

[egkelly]

To CASDAVE: Ralph Nader is a lawyer, who never took an engineering course in his life. He assailed the CORVAIR as being unsafe-yet it was designed to be better than any car (foreign or domestic) in the year it came out. Actually, he did not attack just the Corvair-he dug up some poorly-conducted research (from Sweden) relating to the VW beetle-which proported to show a huge problem with the VW catching fire in accidents-this was later shown to be utter BS. The quality of the "research" (if one can dignify it with the name) conducted by Nader and his front organization is uniformly poor, and biased in favor of his positions. If you delve into his history , you find some curious things-he lives in a house owned by his sister 9so he has no assests to be attached in case of a damage lawsuit), and he takes NO salary from his organization-just a MASSIVE expense account. So the bum is a parasite-he pays virtually no income taxes, and is effectively shielded from all actions of tort! He is free to attack just about anyone he chooses-and no one can get back at him!
Seems like an abuse of the system!

[tracer]

Gadarene wrote:

I was under the impression that in the case of the Pinto, Ford did a cost-benefit analysis and decided that the cost of any potential lawsuits arising from rear-end impact explosions would be less than the cost of recalling the cars...so they didn't recall the cars. Which, to my mind, would be a business putting profit over public safety. Now, this account conflicts with yours, tracer, and you certainly seem to know what you're talking about--anyone care to resolve this? (Or I can look it up, when I get back home.)

Well, I'll be darned.

According to http://www.uoguelph.ca/~sharoon/a1/a1disate.htm, this is indeed the case. Ford did apparently do pre-production crash testing with the Pinto, and the tube leading to the gas tank tore loose from the tank in every rear-end test impact above 25 miles per hour.

And according to http://www.me.utexas.edu/~me179/topi...ons/case3.html, Ford had a second Pinto lawsuit and an indictment for reckless homicide pending before they issued the recall notice -- and in its reckless homicide case, Ford still claimed it issued its recall notice due to the Pinto's reputation, not due to a "real" design flaw.

Incidentally, I've heard a similar claim made about the DC-10 design -- but the claim was made by a Lockheed enthusiast, so he may have just been repeating a rumor he liked.

[kaylasdad99]

From Sam Stone:

People that jump up and down and say, "No death is worth any amount of profits" are simply airheaded idiots who can't think.

I'm not going to pretend I heard you volunteering for anything, Sam, and I'm not really an airheaded idiot who can't think, but, just out of curiosity:

So how much in profits would your own death be worth?

[astorian]

"If this saves even ONE life, it's worth any cost."

"If even ONE person dies as a result of this, it's too dangerous."

Sentiments like this ARE stupid, no matter how noble they may sound. What's more, all of us KNOW these sentiments are ridiculous, and we prove it through our everyday actions.

Do you wear a helmet when you drive to work every day? You don't? Why the heck not? Don't you know that head injuries are the leading cause of death in auto accidents? How on earth can you be so irresponsible, then, as to drive a car without wearing a helmet?

I'll tell you EXACTLY why: because you've sized up the odds of being in a car wreck, and decided the odds are remote enough that it just isn't worth the time, money and trouble it would take to buy and wear a helmet in your car. You see? There IS a point at which you're willing to say, "Even if this makes me a bit safer, it just isn't worth it." Are you surprised, then, that businesses make similar calculations? That businesses are willing to say, "There's a 1 in a billion chance of such-and-such happening. We could eliminate that risk entirely by spending 500 million bucks on thingamajig. Frankly, it just isn't worth the cost."

[tracer]

Don't forget, kaylasdad99, that in 1956 the Ford Motor Company, without any coercion from lawsuits or new laws, came out with a small line of cars engineered specifically for improved safety. They had a deep-dish steering wheel that would absorb some of the impact from a torso hitting it (conventional steering wheels routinely impaled a crash victim on the steering column), and a radical new device called a "seat belt". The car cost a little more, but Ford thought people would be willing to pay a tiny incremental price increase for a safer ride.

The result? Would-be customers said the seat belts looked "ominous". Even if the seat belts were removed, potential customers would likewise turn away if told the padded dashboard and visors were there for safety reasons; salesmen eventually started telling buyers the padding was "stylish" in order to keep their attention. The car did not sell well at all. Ford did not start engineering their cars for safety again until after Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed brought the subject to national attention.

If Ford had continued to increase the production cost of their cars by engineering them for greater safety, out of some altruistic desire to "save lives", everybody would have switched to buying their competitors' less-safe-but-cheaper cars, Ford would go bankrupt, and no one would end up with safer cars.

Now, suppose instead that every car company decides to make their cars super-safe "for the customer's own good", or that sweeping new laws get passed calling for cars that will never ever kill any of their occupants in an accident. Either situation will substantially increase the cost of buying a car. A family that has to save up more money to buy a car will probably put off doing anything that would increase their cost of living -- such as having a child, or having more children if they already have a child.

Overall, thousands, maybe tens or even hundreds of thousands, of would-be children will never be born. All because you wanted to save 20-30 people by making their cars safer. Shame on you.

[kaylasdad99]

Jeez, you make a smart-ass comment around here, and all of a sudden you've got right-wingers jumpin'down your throat, and Olympic-level wise guys tryin' to make you feel guilty.

[Sam Stone]

What, you have to be a right-winger to realize that some safety features are too expensive?

I wouldn't have thought this point was even debatable.

One of the biggest causes of non-motorvehicle accidental death in the U.S. is falling from a height. We could save a lot of lives if we demanded that all houses have 4' netting stretched around the roof to catch people. We don't, because the number of lives saved is not worth the cost.

So if Ford does a study which says that making X modification was not worth the lives it would save, why do we all assume that Ford MUST be guilty? Perhaps they are simply right.

[kaylasdad99]

No, astorian described himself as a right winger shortly after joining the board.


Now let me go read the rest of your post.

[tracer]

Actually, if you really wanted to save lives, the number one killer in America is heart disease. Outlaw all foods that are more than 10% saturated fat.

[pldennison]

I just wanted to shock the bejeezus out of astorian by telling him I agree with him 100%. (And by extension, of course, with dhanson.)