The pharmaceutical industry: how ethical?

According to Covalence Ethical Ranking 2006, the pharmaceutical industry appears to be quite “ethical”…

“Covalence SA was founded in 2001 in Geneva as a limited company by six persons coming from finance and social sciences. 45 criteria of business contribution to human development have been defined within an international legal framework. 25 interns from 12 different countries have collected 11’000 documents from 2000 sources on 14 sectors and 300 companies.” (taken from their website)

” Covalence runs an ethical quotation system, EthicalQuote, a participatory database measuring the reputation of multinational enterprises on ethical issues.” (taken from their website)

So, here we are, Covalence is a Geneva-based company which has published recently its second annual ethical reputation ranking. Incredible results:

– the pharmaceutical industry always ranks among top 10 companies for the 3 categories established by Covalence which are: Best Ethical Quote Score, Best Ethical Quote Progress, Best Reported Performance

– the “ethical” leaders of the pharmaceutical industry are: Glaxo SmithKline, Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck & Co.

I was quite astonished when reading this and I was then wondering whether the Covalence criteria where effective. I had a look at these criteria which are the following:

1/ working conditions

2/ impact of production

3/ impact of product

4/ institutional impact

Looking closely at the criteria 4 “impact of product”, I read those items: product human risk, product social utility, information to consumer…

So, I’m still wondering how the results can be so positive for the pharmaceutical industry!

More:

– Covalence Ethical Ranking 2005 ranked GSK, Merck and BMS as respectively first, second and third leaders among all sectors.

– in the Covalence Pharmaceutical Industry Report 2006 extract, you’ll find among the negative criteria and issues: product human risk: paxil-seroxat; downsizing: Vioxx; Information to consumers: paxil-seroxat; Anti-corruption policy: Neurontin…

Note: if I’m not mistaken, paxil-seroxat is GSK’s, Neurontin is Pfizer’s, Vioxx is Merck’s…

So, how could these companies belong to the top 10 “ethical” leaders?

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