MBA Think: A Well Calibrated Ethical Compass
December 3, 2018
I read “Goldman Sachs Asks in Biotech Research Report: ‘Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?’” For a moment I thought I was on the debate team in college preparing for one of those inevitable tournaments. As part of the prep, my partner — an engaging fellow and slick talked named Nick – would meet with those also involved in the competition from my one mule college in the middle of a corn field. Great ideas were exchanged, and some of them were definitely worthy of 18 year old minds fueled with pizza, ego, confidence, and arrogance. Delightful, right?
The article triggering this moment of nostalgia reveals how the somewhat callow mind navigates possibilities in our modern world. The write up states:
“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” analysts ask in an April 10 report entitled “The Genome Revolution.”
Like many fuzzy questions, one can make a case that there is a lot of money to be made letting a person live from drug treatment to drug treatment. Thus, prolonging life enriches the pharmaceutical firms making the life extending drug, the insurance companies (fine outfits all!), the conglomeratized health care institutions, and assorted health care hangers on and fellow travelers.
On the other hand, letting people die cuts costs. Not good unless one is betting against an individual’s survival. Las Vegas, are you listening? Perhaps Facebook will enter the health care sector. Google continues to innovate despite its failure in the eye wear and glucose monitoring sectors. But Google has not made much progress solving death. Bummer.
I suppose one could ask IBM Watson, which also has a core competence in curing cancer.
How is your ethical compass calibrated? One hopes in a way congruent with exemplars of the American way.
Stephen E Arnold, December 3, 2018
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