The subject of this case analysis is a 21-year old programmer, Bill Sourour, working for a marketing firm in Canada that supported many large pharmaceutical companies. One client had him write code for a quiz that, under most circumstances, resulted in a recommendation to take the client’s drug. Sourour knew that this site was an advertisement posing as informational, so this clear marketing scheme seemed less unethical, and more status quo. Most disciplines have a written code of ethics to help members discern how to act ethically within their profession. In this case study, the subject would have benefited from some guidance. Using the code of ethics from related engineering disciplines and a research paper on professional ethics I will argue that deontology identifies why writing the code for the quiz was morally problematic, and that Sourour should have done more than he did to protect the public from the spread of misinformation and a potentially dangerous product.
The Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the National Society of Professional Engineers each have their own code of ethics, but all of them are consistent about making public health, safety, and welfare a priority. Other topics that come up specifically in most of these documents are “avoiding harm” and being honest and to “avoid […] misrepresentation of fact.” (Sourour) Using these points as a central idea the problems started long before Sourour even had the task to build this website. The marketing firm knowingly built websites designed to get around Canada’s rules about pharmaceutical advertising. When the pharmaceutical company in question became a client, they designed the requirements to target a sensitive population. Also within the requirements, a quiz, which was meant to give a recommendation for treatment of an ailment, was to be designed to recommend their treatment or nothing. When given these requirements and even questioned about the authenticity of the information, Sourour held on to that he was just doing the job, and that’s what he’s there for. Sourour failed to do his part to avoid harm, as he gave no thought to his duty to the public and the possible outcome of his neglect, and completely ignored the misrepresentation of fact that his quiz presented.
A code of ethics is meant to provide guidelines to help a person identify the right and wrong actions to take in most scenarios. That is why this case so clearly falls into deontology. If a code of ethics were prescriptive, you would follow the rules for the sake of the rules, not because you wanted to do the right thing.
The deontological thought process of Immanuel Kant, known as Kantianism, focuses on free will, consent, and a moral obligation to others, and when applied to the small amount of information about Sourour’s situation provided in the introduction, a few major problems stand out. First, Sourour knew that he was designing a website which appeared to be a place for the general public to gather information about a health condition, but behind the scenes was just
an advertisement to target innocent people. This is a harsh reality in the Canadian pharmaceutical industry, because of laws, even if that medicine is the right thing for many people, you have to deceive them to get them the help you think they need. Second, the quiz he coded was built to sell specific drugs to unknowing consumers worried about their health, not provide factual answers to them. Even with no obvious medical background, Sourour implies that he didn’t just blindly type the code for the quiz, but that he understood the client’s intent to provide misinformation to sell a product. Lastly, when questioned by a coworker, he just fell back on the client’s requirements rather than taking this final opportunity to bring up a moral issue. The marketing firm, Sourour, his coworkers, and even the pharmaceutical company had many opportunities to recognize the moral issues with the situation they were in, but none were taken or acted upon.
Mary Beth Armstong’s research paper Confidentiality: A Comparison Across the Professions of Medicine, Engineering and Accounting helps to further define what was wrong about the quiz and the actions surrounding it. Armstrong argues that there are two types of duties: positive and negative. Positive duties require you to do something and promote good things, while negative duties require you to refrain from something to prevent something bad. Additionally, in order to commit to doing a negative duty, the consequences of not doing so must outweigh keeping the secret or not doing the “something.” For example, in order to maintain the trust of the public and the specific patient, a doctor must not reveal ailments discovered in the performance of their duties unless not doing so will yield greater harm to the patient or someone else. In the following paragraphs with Armstrong’s framework, the codes of ethics mentioned previously, and deontological ethical principles as a basis for right and wrong I will discuss what happened in this case, identify the positive and negative actions, and what should have happened.
Of the parts of the case covered so far, the actions that Sourour took in the performance of his duties could be identified as positive. Deontologically speaking, he did his job. When the website he was designing was required to target teenage girls, that could be identified as a negative duty. Reflecting on the code of ethics for the American Medical Association, this negative duty should only be taken when the bad it could prevent outweighs the bad it’ll cause. At this juncture, there isn’t enough information to whistleblow, Sourour did the right thing by continuing to do as the requirements said. When the quiz contents and answers were specified, this was a negative duty. Contrary to the NSPE code of ethics, Sourour did not help prevent the spread of misinformation. By building the quiz as specified, he took part in removing the free will of the website goers by giving them false information to base their decisions on, helping his client guide them down the path to purchasing their drug. Given the implication that he knew the outcome of the quiz was rigged, he should have leveraged a medical professional, the
founder, within the firm to assess the data and allow the firm founder to make a decision on the matter. If he had done this and gotten nowhere, there isn’t enough information to take it outside of the company, yet.
After a successful website launch, he learned that a young girl taking the medicine he’d built the website for had committed suicide. The combination of the danger now identified and a website spreading misinformation to create more of the same danger now warrants action on this negative duty. His chosen action to do nothing was wrong. A more appropriate action would be to re-engage the in-house medical professional. If that had done nothing, other amenable solutions involve asking the clients to take down the website or contacting the news to help stanch the flow of misinformation.
The final negative duty where he chose to do nothing, even though the damage was likely more than if he did something, was leaving the job without resolution of this matter. This lack of action shows a lack of moral obligation to the public, contrary to deontology and medical and engineering ethical codes.
Sourour and the marketing firm he worked for had many pharmaceutical companies for clients, all needing a way to advertise their drugs within the bounds of Canadian law. Many other pharmaceutical companies may spread misinformation through the internet, radio, television or other means, but we, the people, won’t know without diligent research. Although he could have made a serious impact merely by taking on any of the negative duties implied by his job title and deontology, his culpability stands in the tremendous shadow of the pharmaceutical company. It could be argued that there were more positive duties than what I mentioned, like putting a disclaimer on the site, but that would have been outside of the scope of his specialty and in direct conflict with every engineering code of ethics, whether he subscribed to them or not. It could also be argued that the quiz is not necessarily misinformation, and that website users should understand the purpose of the website is to sell them the drug. If that intent was made clear on the website, it would have likely caused a violation of the laws meant to restrict the ways that pharmaceutical companies can advertise prescription drugs to consumers. The way their intent is hidden within the general health information website makes it misinformation, and unethical.
Sourour, Bill. “The Code I’m Still Ashamed Of.” freeCodeCamp.Org, 3 June 2019, www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-code-im-still-ashamed-of-e4c021dff55e.