Examination of Four Different Ethics Cases

Case 1.1: Made in the USA – Dumped in Brazil, Africa, Iraq…

Fire-retardant children’s pajamas found to contain Tris, a flame-retardant chemical found to cause kidney cancer in children. Millions of pairs of the pajamas expected to be sold now had to be disposed of. Exporting companies began purchasing the pajamas at a wholesale price with the intention of dumping the banned product on overseas markets.

Dalkon Shield was a birth control device found to have adverse reactions including pelvic inflammation, blood poisoning, tubal pregnancies, and uterine perforations. The Office of Population within the US Agency for International Development purchased the product and dumped it on foreign markets for the intent of population control. They claimed that Third World countries would prefer any method of birth control over none, as the rate of infant mortality is high.

Arguments: foreign countries should be free to decide for themselves whether the benefits of these products are worth their risks.

U.S. regulates in that they must keep foreign countries fully informed on what products have been banned.

Argument: most Third World countries lack regulatory agencies that are concerned about their people’s safety.

Argument: Not all agencies inform the State Department of banned or harmful products, which means that when the products are dumped into foreign markets, these countries will not know the harm.

Issue: even if certain products were not allowed to be exporting, it is very easy to illegally export and sneak around the rules.

In the case of pesticides banned in the US – they have been dumped onto foreign markets, but these chemicals bled into the water, and we have no way of stopping it from spreading in the water and not coming ...

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... When those laws are so reprehensible that conforming to them would be unethical, they should be ready to withdraw from that market.”

Other companies have stated that if they resist the Chinese government and their operations are closed down or if they choose to leave the country for moral reasons, they would only deny to ordinary Chinese whatever fresh air the Internet, even filtered and censored, can provide in a closed society.

Tech companies are considering what laws would be able to help provide a company like Yahoo with directions on what to do when a situation like this arises again. If companies had an American law to abide by, they could say their hands are tied and they can’t break the law, and the Chinese government would have no choice but to accept this in order to reap the benefits brought about by having US tech companies operating in their country.