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There has been a lot of talk about the costs of health coverage and prescription drug costs lately. Clearly, with the economy in apparent recession, and with prescription drug costs on the rise, this is an issue that merits some discussion. But is it an ethical issue? If so, why is it? What makes it such? And what is the question at hand, the ever increasing cost of prescription drugs; or the right of pharmaceutical companies to receive government subsidies to aid in research and development of drugs that will eventually be used in the treatment of rare diseases?

On the other side of this question is the federal government. What exactly does the federal government hope to accomplish with the subsidies (incentives) that it offers to the pharmaceutical companies? Would the drugs now being produced with the use of these incentives be produced without them? And last, do these incentives really benefit the citizens of the United States; or just the pharmaceutical companies, who are lining their pockets (so to speak) with the substantial earnings created by these drugs?

As any study of ethics, the view that one takes of this issue is likely going to be based on the camp that one finds themselves in be it teleology (the view that something is ethical if the consequences are beneficial) or deontology (the view that something is ethical based on intentions instead of the consequences). One must also look at the issue from a view of social responsibility on behalf of both the federal government and the pharmaceutical industry.

View One: Do the Results Justify the Means Used to Achieve Them?

If the question is one of money invested and the results achieved, then the evidence seems to point toward the conclusion that the federal government and the pharmaceutical industry have behaved ethically in the production of prescription drugs used in the treatment of rare diseases. Since its inception, the Orphan Drug Act has resulted in "more than 100 products [that] have FDA approval and are available to treat patients for rare diseases in the United States such as tuberculosis, cystic fibrosis and hairy cell leukemia" (Mirza). At the same time, these medications have prevented an estimated 108,000 deaths to rare diseases (Mirza).

On the other hand, if teleology requires us to look at the consequences that this has had on the society as a whole and not just those that would otherwise suffer from diseases which have no present cure, we may conclude that neither the pharmaceutical

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