¿Contratos de explotación mutuamente beneficiosos? Abuso de poder, personas vulnerables y grandes laboratorios farmacéuticos

Abstract

In an extremely unequal world where there are powerful countries and other weak ones, we find companies that increase their profits and people that decrease their life expectancies. While pharmaceutical companies in the first world need to test their medicines on human beings, millions of vulnerable people in the third world need medicines that they cannot access given the context of poverty in which they find themselves. In this situation, conflicts of interest may arise between laboratories and vulnerable people regarding testing and access to medicines, respectively. This article proposes to reflect and discuss, from theoretical contributions from the ethical field, what some authors have called exploitative contracts in reference to the mutually beneficial and voluntary relationship between business actors and vulnerable people. Specifically, and based on various examples, we will analyze whether or not these contracts comply with some fundamental ethical principles.