Commercial Interest and Professional Ethics of Pharmacists: Socio-Reflexive Approach

Abstract

Increase in unethical medicine sales has led the public and social sciences to ask whether a pharmacist is a medical professional or just a salesperson. The metaphysical, abstract formulation of this question implies a full and complete (dis)harmony between commercial interest and professional ethics as binary oppositions. In this paper, however, a socio-reflexive approach is used, which defines professions as groups of experts with a dual nature: they offer services as well as use knowledge and power for economic profit. Without questioning the integrity of the attributive theory of professions, or its central thesis that commercial interest and professional ethics represent two fundamentally opposed logical systems, socio-reflexive approach distinguishes between professions based on the level or amount of commercial interest and professional ethics. The revision of the attributive theory - by introducing a new discursive dimension - requires one more addition: proportion, or the realization that the relation between these two opposed logical systems is not constant but changeable – if social conditions are met, commercial interest will aim to suppress professional ethics.
Based on literature that examines the consequences of “pharmacists-friendly” world and laws, the paper concludes that, in today’s world, pharmacists increasingly place their particular interests ahead of the interests of patients because of the law that allows non-prescription medicine sales.
Socio-reflexive approach, therefore, takes into consideration the influence of state laws on the behavior of pharmacists.