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Revised 15 July 2003.

Abstract

The influence of healthcare ethics is developing rapidly throughout the UK. University postgraduate courses cater for an increasing number of healthcare professionals who are keen to study the subject. Yet the pharmaceutical industry remains largely ignorant of healthcare ethics and the new language of morality that it is spreading throughout the National Health Service (NHS).

This paper briefly explains the nature of healthcare ethics and gives examples of where its influence has already taken root. It suggests that the situation in the UK pharmaceutical industry may be symptomatic of an international necessity to play closer attention to this subject. If the pharmaceutical industry does not, it risks ignoring the concerns of healthcare professionals and, in the process, reinforcing a perception that there is an irreconcilable conflict of values between the healthcare community and a fundamentally amoral industry.