Introduction
The purpose of this assignment is to identify a utilitarian, ethical perspective of a company that supplies transistors to a pace maker company. This will be done by first describing Utilitarian ethics. Followed by identifying the key utilitarian ethical problems confronting the transistor company. Then covering the advice that Jeremy Bentham might have given in this situation. After this the Utility Test will be applied to the situation, followed by the Common Good Test. Upon completion of both test the results will be compared to decide which of the two test is the most informative and why.
Transistor Company Back Ground The case that was presented for review was one of ethical decisions. A company that produced transistors (referred to from this point on as “Trans Inc”) was presented a decision to either stop selling to a particular company in order to avoid legal issues, or continue selling to that company in order to save lives. The company that Trans Inc was selling transistors to made pacemakers. For the use of this assignment the pacemaker company will be referred to as “Medical Inc.”
At the time, the 1970’s, pacemaker technology was in its infancy (Shanks, 2012). There were many problems with the technology and if the pacemaker failed then the user would die. In one reported incident a patient yawned and this caused the pacemaker to stop causing the patient to die.
After several incidents that caused patients to die, Trans Inc. starting to reconsider doing business with Medical Inc. The board was concerned with being sued. Another concern was rather the transistors were not being tested thoroughly enough. This problems cause Trans Inc to decide to discontinue doing business with Medical Inc.
At this time Medical Inc informs Trans Inc that they are the final suppliers of the transistors that were used in the pacemakers. If