Ethical Analysis Based on the Constant Gardener

Mid-term Paper for Business Ethics

“This is Africa” is not the Reason

for being “Guinea Pigs”

——Ethical Analysis Based on The Constant Gardener

MB445072 Sunny, Liu Di

MB445443 Sylvia, Zhang Yin

“This is Africa” is not the Reason for being “Guinea Pigs”

——Ethical Analysis Based on The Constant Gardener

The Constant Gardener is a movie that reveals a criminality of drug research and trial in developing countries. The main character Justin, a British diplomat in Kenya, is once a person who tends to avoid making a fuss until he learns that his wife Tessa was found dead on the veld. Through digging into his wife’s death, he finds out a sandal that KDH, a multinational drug company and Three Bees, a medical testing company are testing innocent Africans with a drug, Dypraxa, without their true consent or understanding of the drug. The Kenyan and British government has also joined into the leagues. The pharmaceutical companies refuse to redesign the drug because the companies determine that it is cheaper and easier to dispose of the African testing rather than to pay the costs of redesigning the drug. The movie dramatizes the evils of corporate greed and international political corruption along with the murder, intimidation, and bribery in the unethical drug research. At the end, Justin is also killed in an organized hit at the place where Tessa died. But the scandal is revealed finally.

1. The major ethical issues or questions that arise from the movie

In the film, we can figure out a series of ethical issues relating to the big pharmaceutics，the Kenya and British government, together with some individuals involving into the affairs. Each part may face with a dilemma between interest and morality. However, some of them choose cruel deception and crime，some choose justice and rights.

Through a series of clues, I’d like to sort out the following three as the main ethical issues reacted by the film:

(1) In the...