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industry nor the federal government are behaving in an ethical manner. At the time of Mirza's report, only $25 million were allocated to assist the pharmaceutical industry with the development of orphan drugs essentially, one dollar per patient with a rare disease (Mirza). This would be appear to be hardly enough money to really make a dent in the problem at hand.

And if that is not enough to make a person question the ethicality of the issue, consider that the pharmaceutical industry is the second largest industry lobbying in Washington (in terms of dollar amounts) spending an estimated $675 million each year in an effort to persuade federal officials to pass laws benefitting the industry (Ismail). It would appear that we are giving them back their money in the name of orphan drug research, while at the same time working to benefit the industry above the citizens who were originally meant to benefit from such an act.

View Two: What Happens When Good Intentions Go Wrong?

Another view of ethics considers whether something is ethical based on the intentions of the act versus the outcome (deontology). From this standpoint, we are initially forced to view the acts of the federal government as ethical. The law was passed in order to benefit those suffering from rare diseases that might not have otherwise had a treatment. And even after many amendments, the law remains in place with the intent of providing a benefit to the American people.

From this point of view, it is hard to evaluate the ethicality of the pharmaceutical industry in regards to the Orphan Drug Act. On the other hand, one has to question the intentions (and consequently, the ethics) of an industry that spends millions of dollars in lobbying Washington to protect their interests even when those interests mean higher costs for the patients in need of the drugs. The intentions of the pharmaceutical industry are also brought into question when one considers that, as an industry, pharmaceutical companies spend twice as much money on marketing prescriptions drugs as they do on research & development to produce those drugs (Ismail). In this scenario, it would appear that the intentions of the pharmaceutical industry are to continue lining their pockets with both consumer and taxpayer money a move that is in no way ethical.

View Three: What Happened to Social Responsibility?

As a government that "of the people, by the people and for the people" as the United States constitution has laid out, the federal

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