Step 1: Determine the facts in the situation – obtain all of the unbiased facts possible. Clearly state the ethical issue.

• Hospitals and clinics can only afford the syringe if it is at a low enough cost
• The auto-disable feature helps prevent disease
• The cost for the safety feature is expensive relative to the costumer
• The syringe is meant to be for the developing world (specific customer)
• Ethical Issue: Whether or not the design of the syringe should incorporate the safety feature because if it does then there is the risk that not every hospital can help treat its patients and if it doesn’t then even though people are being treated for one things they can potentially get infected from another disease.

Step 2: Define the Stakeholders – those with a vested interest in the outcome

• Hospitals and Clinics
• Manufacturing companies making the syringe
• Patients at the clinics
• Investors
• Government in developing countries

Step 3: Assess the motivations of the Stakeholders

• Hospitals and Clinics: They want to be able to make money by having syringes to vaccinate people and to also insure that their patients are healthy and getting the medical care they need
• Manufacturing companies making the syringe: To make money
• Patients at the clinics: To make sure they stay healthy so they can continue to live a healthy life by getting whatever vaccine or medicine that the syringe is meant to dispense
• Investors:  To make sure they get a return on their money from selling the product
• Government in developing countries: To ensure the health of it’s citizens so that they can live longer and healthier

Step 4: Formulate (atleast three) alternative solutions – based on information available, using basic ethical core values as guide Approaches [1/2/3: repeat for every action] • Potential solution • Ethical Principle or code • Pros • Cons

• Make the syringe without the safety feature:
  • Ethical Principle: Having a syringe that is affordable and can save many lives, but with the risk of getting another disease
  • Pros:
    • It will help solve medical issues that are currently not treatable and will help get to more people since it is low cost.
  • Cons:
    • The risk that giving someone an injection will give them another disease
    • The unclean syringes could give a disease to people that is more deadly than what the syringe was meant to be used to treat
• Make the syringe with the safety feature
  • Ethical Principle: Now people will be able to be safely treated, but not everyone can get treated since the syringe isn’t affordable to all hospitals and clinics.
  • Pros:
    • The syringe is safe to use and will help prevent patients from getting any other types of diseases
  • Cons:
    • Not all hospitals can afford it so they can’t treat all their patients and there will be people that die because they can’t get treated
• Make the syringe with a cheaper material that will allow the cost of the safety feature to be within the limits of all hospitals and clinics
  • Ethical Principle: Trying to make sure all hospitals are able to use the syringe while sacrificing quality of the product as a whole
  • Pros:
    • All hospitals will be able to not only use the syringe, but make sure their patients are safe from getting another infection with the addition of the safety feature
  • Cons:
    • The quality of the syringe might not be as good so it might not work as affectively as intended
    • there might be more defects with it so the hospitals need to buy larger quantities to ensure that patients can get treated
    • The material needs to be thoroughly tested and could add additional expenses to the project
    • There is a lot more uncertainty with how the new material would react to certain medical treatments

Step 5: Seek additional assistance, as appropriate – engineering codes of ethics, previous cases, peers, reliance on personal experience, inner reflection

• The members of my group were very helpful to give ideas on how to solve this potential solution and what outside information to take into consideration

Step 6: Select the best course of action – that which satisfies the highest core ethical values. Explain reasoning and justify. Discuss your stance vis-a-vis other approaches discussed in the class.

I think that making the syringe from a cheaper material would be the best overall solution because it avoids sacrificing moral issues and will allow every hospital to be able to afford the syringe still.  It is better than making the syringe without the safety feature because it doesn’t run the risk of infecting patients with other types of diseases so it will ensure that they can get back to good health without any other problems.  It is also better than making the syringe with the safety feature because some hospitals in developing countries wouldn’t be able to afford the syringe which will leave patients untreated.  The point of the syringe is to help treat people in developing countries so it is better for the hospitals if they can afford the syringe and be able to use them.  Hospitals are looking to treat as many people as possible and having a cheaper material for the syringe without getting patients sick with another disease is most beneficial to them. If patients get sick because the safety feature wasn’t included then there are questions of whether or not it was worth giving them the shot in the first place.  Hospitals don’t want to be liable for causing other infections from using an unclean syringe.  Using a cheaper material might sacrifice the quality and performance of the syringe, however overall the syringe still should be able to do its job and do it safely so that people can be treated effectively.  This solution benefits investors the most since they will get the highest return on their money with having the most hospitals being able to purchase the syringe.  Investors would more likely lose money if the syringe was more expensive and not as many hospitals could afford to purchase it.  For the governments in these developing countries, they will benefit most from being able to treat all their citizens safely instead of having to select which hospitals get syringes and which don’t if the cost was too high.  They also benefit from keeping the syringes safe from infecting their citizens with other diseases so they can have an overall better reputation.

Step 7: (If applicable) What are the implications of your solution on the venture. Explain the impact of your proposed solution on the venture’s technology, economic, social and environmental aspects.

• The implications of the solution would be to find a new manufacturer that would make the syringe with the material needed.  There might be some technology research that needs to go into it to figure out exactly what cheaper material can be used.  There might need to be a switch in manufacturing companies if the original one can’t make the syringe with the new material, so it could potentially be bad for the original manufacturing company and it would lose revenue.
• The impact economically would be that money is being circulated between manufacturing companies, hospitals, my investors and myself.  Investors will benefit because they will get the highest return on their money since they will have the largest range of customers. Economically it will also be helping patients live longer so they can in turn spend more money.  Hospitals will also be buying more syringes since they can all afford the low cost syringe, this could lead to other hospitals that weren’t originally in consideration to buying syringes from this project.
• The social implications are that people will be living longer and healthier which is better for a society to be productive.  Hopefully this will lead to a lower death rate and can improve overall quality of life for individuals.  Hospitals will also get better reputations from being able to treat more people.  Governments will also benefit socially since they are helping contribute to the overall health of their citizens.
• Environmentally it might be damaging because the syringe new material might be worse for the environment and manufacturing it will also use a lot of energy and materials.  This can reflect badly on the manufacturing company and investors because now they are associated with contributing to environmental issues.  This can also cause more pollution and waste in the areas that are using the syringe and can potentially affect the communities near the hospitals if there are large amounts of waste being created around them.