...MERCK AND RIVER BLINDNESS 1. Think about the definition of stakeholders — any parties with a stake in the organization’s actions or performance. Who are the stakeholders in this situation? How many can you list? On what basis would you rank them in importance? People suffering from the disease or those who potentially may be infected – would directly benefit from the cure Merck employees at all levels – profitability and the economic health of the company affects current employees Merck shareholders – inability to profit from the drug might have a negative effect on shareholder’s value, but taking the stand on “doing the right thing” might have a favorable effect on company’s reputation and increase the value of the stock Various healthcare organizations – Merck is one of the leaders in the industry whose actions or inactions may affect the state of the industry as a whole One way to rank stakeholders in importance is by their level of benefit from the drug putting people suffering from the disease in the first place as they would benefit the most from the invent of the cure. Then, employees and shareholders would share the second place, provided that the company would most likely not be able to recover funds invested in the long and expensive process of developing the drug which in turn would affect company’s profitability. Finally, various healthcare organizations would rank third; the effect on them would depend on the level of their involvement in the process...
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...Research suggests that a new vaccine that worked for animals would help to kill the parasite that caused river blindness. The resource could take an enormous amount of time and money to develop a new vaccine. At the same time, there is no guarantee that the drug would have a buy in value in the market that could affect the company’s name and the shares. One reason for the difficulty to sell the product is that this vaccine is the animal version of vaccine. Despite the company’s loss, Merck and company were obligated to study and produce the human version of the vaccine. The company’s chairman stated that the medicine is for people and not for the profit of the company. The company was aware that the vaccine will not produce enough profit for the company, but yet the company wanted to develop ethics. Merck and river blindness are a good example for Utilitarianism theory because the results brought happiness for both the company and the people. Utilitarianism is an ethical framework that focuses on the outcomes or results of actions. In fact, its name comes from the Greek word Telos, which means “end.” The two most influential developers of the utilitarian viewpoint were Englishmen Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Under this framework, acting ethically means making decisions and taking actions that benefit people by maximizing “good” and minimizing “bad.” Outcomes, results, or goals are the focus—not the action taken to achieve them. Utilitarians facing...
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...Merck- River Blindness Case Analysis Section 1: Introduction and situational analysis: Merck is an American-based international pharmaceutical company with a history that spans almost 350 years. The company focuses on innovative research and consumer education. (Demand Media, 1999-2011 ) In 1950, George W. Merck, then the chairman of the company said, “We try never to forget that medicine is for people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered that, the larger they have been.” This philosophy was at the core of Merck and Co.’s values system. (Kreitner, 2010) In 1978, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that over 300,000 people were blind and another 18 million were affected with a disease called onchocerciasis, better known as river blindness. River blindness was caused by parasitic worms that was spread by small black flies the breed in and lived around fast moving rivers mostly in developing countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. The parasitic larvae were transferred to humans when bitten by the small black flies, at which time the parasitic larvae would infect the host. The worms would begin to reproduce producing millions of microscopic baby worms into the person’s body. This would eventually lead to gross deformity, severe itching that in some cases cause people to commit suicide and eventually blindness. At the time, the disease had...
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...Merck and Co. and river blindness MANUEL VELASQUEZ, Business Ethics. Concepts and cases 4th edt., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 1998 River blindness is an agonizing disease that affects some 18 million impoverished people living in remote villages along the banks of rivers in tropical regions of Africa and Latin America. The disease is caused by a tiny parasitic worm that is passed from person to person by the bite of the black fly which breeds in river waters. The tiny worms burrow under a person's skin where they grow as long as two feet curled up inside ugly round nodules half an inch to an inch in diameter. Inside the nodules the worms reproduce by releasing millions of microscopic offsprings called microfilaria that wriggle their way throughout the body moving beneath the skin, discoloring it as they migrate, and causing lesions and such intense itching that victims sometimes commit suicide. Eventually, the microfilaria invade the eyes and gradually blind the victim. Spraying pesticides to eradicate the black fly faltered when it developed an immunity to the pesticides. Moreover, the only drugs available to treat the parasite in humans have been so expensive, have such severe side effects, and require such lenghty hospital stays that the treatments are impractical for the destitute victims who live in isolated villages. In many countries people have fled the areas along the rivers, abandoning large tracts of rich fertile land. Many of them, however...
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...Helen Keller, a woman most famously known for the fact that she was both deaf and blind, did not let her disabilities prevent her from receiving a full education and living her life to its full potential. Although she was quite successful despite the difficulties she faced, others are not as lucky. Many people worldwide suffer from blindness or some sort of vision impairment. Vision loss can affect the way one functions socially and economically, leading to drastic changes in one’s daily life. Blindness, or the impairment of vision, affects 2.3% of the world’s population (“Blindness Statistics”). The National Federation for the Blind classifies lindness as vision impairment that affects a person’s daily life (“Blindness Statistics”). This...
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...A) Write about the techniques Tennyson uses to tell the story in Tithonus The purpose of this essay is to discuss narrative methods and techniques used by Tennyson to tell the story in the poem Tithonus. Tennyson uses the theme of light to effectively illustrate the intense love Tithonus felt for Aurora but simultaneously this also highlight the love Tithonus will never feel again. This is shown by constantly mentioning the East where the sun rises, and also by the words ‘Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly….yet they blind the stars’- by saying her eyes blind the stars Tennyson could also be saying how he (Tithonus) too was at one point blinded by his love for her. The use of imagery within the poem like ‘glimmering’ and ‘lights’ gives readers the idea that his life was happy with her in it yet, the contrast of language, ‘gloomy’, ‘shadows’, ‘twilight’ underlines the fact that he is no longer joyful as he is now without her. Another reason we could argue that he is no longer happy is that he may be envious of how she is immortal and forever youthful but he is immortal but consistently aging; this interpretation is supported by the continuous mentioning of immortal youth ‘To dwell in the presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth’. Also the use of the word twilight suggests that Tithonus state is that he is caught in the middle, forever watching the circle of life without him in it – ‘the woods decay…dies the...
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...throughout the play it becomes one of its central themes. In the play King Oedipus started life with a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, but Oedipus was blind to the truth his whole life. The parents who raised him weren't his parents at all. His real parents were Laius and Jocasta. Jocasta who was his who was his real mother was now his wife. When Oedipus does find the truth, he loses his physical vision by blinding himself. Even when Jocasta found out the truth, she refused to accept it and commits suicide. Jocasta blindness was different from Oedipus as well as both differed from Tiresias, the blind prophet. Tiresias's blindness was of phyisical nature. Tiresias played the role of th etyplical pophet in the Greek tragedy. He was phyisically blind, but he had visions into the future. Jocasta's blindness was different because she knew about the propphecy, but thought Oedipus was dead. Oedipus was blind in more tha one way. He was blind to the truth about his own life, and he was also phyisically blind. It is not fate that takes the sight of...
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...dies at the end showing remorse for disowning Cordelia who truly loved him and Oedipus pokes out his eyes after realising what has happened and what he has done. He also leaves Thebes and is portrayed to be guilty and hating his life. Therefore he pokes out his eyes leaving him to “walk through a cloud of darkness and it will last forever”. This shows how remorseful he is feeling which is also present in King Lear as Lear realises the mistake he committed by disowning Cordelia. As he holds her he points to her as if saying she is alive which shows he wants her to be alive. King Lear and Oedipus Rex also contain the mutual theme of blindness which is both metaphorical and physical. The protagonists of the story are metaphorically blind not seeing what is happening to them, which proves them to be gullible and vulnerable. The theme of blindness to the truth is represented in both plays. Just how King Lear is blinded by Goneril and Regan’s fake statement of their love for him, Oedipus is also blinded, however he is unwilling to accept the true statements. This shows a difference in both protagonists because Oedipus is given the true statements however he does not believe them, whilst Lear is given false statements of love which he fails to discover. King Lear and Oedipus Rex also reflect the idea of guilt and present their circumstances for the lack of belief. Another similarity between the two plays is...
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...The latest rage in technological gadgetry is the electronic reader (e-reader), a mobile electronic device designed primarily for the purpose of reading electronic (digital) books and periodicals. While this certainly sounds like a device that could only have been thought up in the twenty-first century, the original idea is credited to an “early-twentieth-century writer and impresario named” Robert (B0b) Carlton Brown according to The New York Times (Schuessler, 2010). Though there are many credits to Bob Brown’s name, he is most known for a manifesto written in the 1930’s in which he blasts the written word for not keeping up with the age (Schuessler, 2010). Brown writes: To continue reading at today’s speed, I must have a machine…A simple reading machine which I can carry or move around, attach to any old electric light plug and read hundred-thousand-word novels in 10 minutes if I want to, and I want to. (Schuessler, 2010, para. 6). Although Brown would not live to see his idea to fruition, today’s e-reader certainly fits the description of his “simple reading machine”. How It Works While there are many brand names of e-readers, the majority of them fall into two categories: wireless or not wireless. E-readers that are not wireless require the user to purchase their digital print media through their computer first, then connecting the e-reader to the computer to transfer the files. The wireless e-readers offer a much simpler system of turning the reader on, searching for...
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...Visual Impairment Introduction Vision challenge or impairment is when a person’s degree of seeing is very low and the affected person requires assistance in order to carry out daily routine. Significantly, for one to qualify as visually impaired there must be prove that a person cannot undertake duties by himself without necessary assistance. For a person to qualify as a visually challenged, there must be a prove that the affected eyes cannot be conventionally treated. Visual challenge cannot be corrected by surgery, refractive measures neither by medication and that is why it is termed as visual impairment. The most rampart causes of visual challenge are trauma, degenerative or congenital means and a variety of diseases. In the society, blindness is the term that is preferably used to describe a visually impaired per son. Low eyesight is generally revealed when the affected person cannot view a normal distance and walk by himself (Algozzine, 2006). The degree of impairment can also be revealed when a person cannot read some normal writings. This is to say that even with the assistance of contact magnifying glasses or even eyeglasses the victim cannot reveal the writings on a normal newspaper (Bailey & Hall, 1990). Hyperopic impairment is accrued with inability person to see objects in a close distance. Myopic impairment is quite the opposite of hyperopic whereby a victim cannot identify objects at close distance. All these vision challenges greatly obscure the affected person...
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...How Blind People Identify Paper Money Submitted by Tom on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 09:17 accessibility Blind Money Technology Before you pay for a movie ticket or for a new pair of shoes, you would always make sure you’re handing the seller the right amount. This is really simple, you just have to give a quick look at your money, take out the right amount, and that's it. But for people who cannot see, this becomes a difficult task. Here, we will talk about the problem faced by blind people, and discuss the possible solutions for this issue. The Problem with Paper Money In countries such as the U.S., all denominations of money have similar sizes. This makes it very difficult for blind people to distinguish one denomination from another. Solutions Done By Governments Governments have devised a way to help the blind tell apart different money denominations. In countries such as Australia and Malaysia, each denomination of money has a distinct width and length. Along with this, blind people can use a small card device to quickly measure and distinguish money. Meanwhile, a more specific approach has been done by the Canadian government. In Canada, money is being produced such that there are Braille dots in the bills that represent a specific denomination. Blind people can in turn find the corner containing the Braille dots and read them to know the amount they are holding. Solutions Done By Blind People The above steps made by governments...
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...| Retinal implants/The Boston Retinal implant project | Unit2 assignment2 Gs1145 | | | 1/17/2014 | Retinal Implants The article talks about the Boston Retinal Implant Project. It had thirty academically based biologists and engineers. It included several researches from Harvard, Cornell and Massachusetts institute of technology. Professor W. Kizzy Jones from Florida International University college of engineering and computing was one of the thirty researchers. The project focuses on people who loss vision though injury, vision loss caused by eye disorder or age related macular degeneration. Jones’s work on the feed though component that transfer the signals from the implanted microchip to the electrodes was the most technological development device. The improvements on this device will greatly improve the quality of the image the person can see. The device has more than two hundred fifty six electrodes that helps see images with larger number of pixels. It is a device with sixty electrodes that help people who are blind to read words on a screen. Hopefully in the next ten years macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa will be a thing of the past. Macular degeneration affects older adults that loss vision in the center of the visual field because of damaged retina. Retinitis pigmentosa is a inherited eye disorder that severe vision impairment. The Boston Ritnal implants project was founded in 1980 and was working with Bionic Eye Technologies inc along...
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...Cathedral I did not care for the narrator of this story at all! The way he told the story was very irritating and made it hard for me to become interested. I had to read back over many paragraphs to comprehend what was going on. He could have put five of his short sentences that said the same thing over and over again, into one sentence. To me the narrator seemed simple minded. There was a couple moments only a sentence or two where he made me think the story was going to become easier to read, but it did not. In a way I do pity him, because his sentences consisting of only a few words and the way he would say the same sentence over, just switching the words a little made it seem to me that the narrator did not know how to speak correctly. The narrator seemed almost resentful about Robert coming to visit. He came across very rude and non-supporting of his wife, who was excited being able to see an important friend she had not seen in years. The narrator acted like being blind was a contagious and deadly disease. He did everything not to like Robert or to give him a fighting chance. Robert surprised me in the end, because after the way the narrator reacted throughout the story, in the end it was Robert who won over the narrator and gave the narrator an important life experience. Robert may be blind and could not see the narrator’s actions and facial comments, but he had to be able to feel the negative attitude the narrator had towards him. Robert just continued on,...
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...important symbol in the novel. "I see the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding...Why is a bird-soiled statue more commanding than one that is clean?" (pg. 36). First of all, the statue is described as cold, having hard metallic folds, and empty eyes. These all refer to the Founder-who could be a cold, hard, empty man. The idea of the "empty eyes" is extra important because of the whole motif of blindness that exists in Invisible Man. The eyes might show a void feeling, but more likely a void of true...
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...must wear bifocals or trifocals to obtain the best vision at every distance. However, these problems are minor irritations compared to the loss of vision caused by a common agerelated disorder. Painlessly and insidiously, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) affects an estimated 10 million Americans.' It's the most common cause of vision loss and blindness in people over 65, and it can affect people at younger ages as well.' The risk of developing AMD steadily increases with age. People in their 50s bave about a 2% chance of developing it, while the risk rises to nearly 30% in those over age 75.^ Every three minutes, another case of AMD is diagnosed in the US.^ Each year, 200,000 people with AMD lose all central vision in one or both eyes.' More people than ever before will be forced to live with AMD as the baby boomer generation continues to grow older. This article reviews the anatomy and function of the normal retina. It also identifies tbe risk factors for AMD and its causes, as well as its diagnosis and treatment. A diagnosis of AMD means a significant decrease in vision, and, in some cases, complete blindness. Because patients face important concerns related to their everyday activities, methods of addressing those issues will be discussed. Normal Vision For a person to see properly, light must pass through the cornea, pupil, and the lens. Then it must be focused onto the retina, the innermost layer of tissue at the back of the eye. The surface of...
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