Dublin Core PKP Metadata Items Metadata for this Document
 
1. Title Title of document The quality of medicines: an ethical issue?
 
2. Creator Author's name, affiliation, country Raffaella Ravinetto; Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp,; BE
 
3. Subject Discipline(s)
 
3. Subject Keyword(s)
 
4. Description Abstract The Hippocratic maxim, "Do no harm," is a long-standing fundamental principle of medical ethics, encompassing both medical practice and medical research. Yet, not enough attention is given to the implications of this principle for sectors related to medical research and practice, such as the pharmaceutical sector. The regulation of the standards of quality in pharmaceutical production and distribution, for instance, is generally considered a purely technical – rather than ethical – subject. Poor enforcement of regulatory supervision of manufacturers and wholesalers of medicine exposes the end-users to low-quality pharmaceutical products, which will result in avoidable "harm", such as therapeutic failure, emergence of resistance and even direct toxicity. A glaring example of this in recent times was the death, in Pakistan, of 120 cardiovascular patients who had received a medicine contaminated with pyrimethamine. Due to the globalisation of the pharmaceutical supply chain and the lack of international regulatory oversight, stringent drug regulatory authorities in affluent countries are also exposed to challenges related to quality. In the USA, for instance, at least four patients died after using contaminated heparin from China. These and other unnecessary deaths, caused by medical products which harmed rather than benefited the patients, are unacceptable and should be questioned on ethical grounds.
 
5. Publisher Organizing agency, location Forum for Medical Ethics Society
 
6. Contributor Sponsor(s)
 
7. Date (YYYY-MM-DD) 2016-11-30
 
8. Type Status & genre
 
8. Type Type
 
9. Format File format HTML , PDF
 
10. Identifier Uniform Resource Identifier https://ijme.in/articles/the-quality-of-medicines-an-ethical-issue/
 
11. Source Title; vol., no. (year) Indian Journal of Medical Ethics;: Of caring and healing
 
12. Language English=en en
 
13. Relation Supp. Files
 
14. Coverage Geo-spatial location, chronological period, research sample (gender, age, etc.)
 
15. Rights Copyright and permissions

All articles published in IJME are available on its website free of charge. The copyright for published material belongs to IJME/FMES. IJME freely permits the reprint (or reproduction on a website) of articles from the journal, as long as this is for non-commercial use and appropriate credit is given to the author and the journal and publication details are mentioned. The commercial use of our content can be made only after obtaining permission from and on payment to IJME. This is intended to support production of the journal.