Pharmaceutical Marketing Ethics: Ethical Standards for More Acceptable Practices

This paper analyses the major ethical issues raised by direct-to-consumer communications (DTCC) of pharmaceutical drugs, with a view to proposing ethical standards of practice for the marketing profession. A case-based analysis of four types of marketing practices is used to highlight the main ethical dimensions of DTCC. The ethical implications are then unpacked using the specific lenses of prominent ethical theories, so that non-experts in ethics—i.e., marketing professionals—can understand the implications for their daily practice. To synthesize the essential ethical imperatives related to DTCC, an oath for marketing professionals is offered as a guide to ethical conduct.