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“If I don’t sell it, the shop next door will.” Does that excuse selling a remedy I think is useless?

Hetal Shah Fellow
· 2 replies
Business & technology ethicsAnalyticIndianJainismBernard Williams#complicity#if-not-me#integrity#pharmacy-ethics
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Its coordinates: 3.3.3 Business and Economic Ethics · 3.3.4 Ethics of Technology and AI

At our pharmacy counter in Ahmedabad we sell a herbal "immunity tonic" that I am fairly sure does nothing. It's legal, cheap and harmless as far as I know. Customers ask for it by name. When I told my father I didn't want to stock it, he said: if we don't sell it, the shop across the lane will, and the customer loses nothing except our goodwill.

That argument has a famous version. Bernard Williams imagined a chemist, George, who is offered a job in a laboratory researching chemical and biological weapons. If George refuses, the job goes to someone who will pursue the research more zealously. Williams used the case to argue that an ethics which only counts outcomes leaves out integrity, the fact that some things are mine to do or not do.

The Jain teaching I grew up with makes a similar point in its own way. Harm can be done by you, caused by you through others, or approved by you, and all three count.

My case is much smaller than George's. But:

  • Does "someone else will do it anyway" ever excuse anything?
  • Is a useless but harmless product even a harm? Maybe the harm is to the customer who takes the tonic instead of seeing a doctor.
  • Or is my discomfort just pride, wanting clean hands more than I want to help anyone?
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2 answers

  1. Arvind Poojary

    Fellow

    "Harmless" is doing a lot of work in your father's argument. In the villages I visit, the harmless remedy is rarely the problem on its own. The problem comes when the tonic is how someone puts off the blood test for six months.

    So I'd ask what the label claims. If it says "supports immunity" and the customer hears "you won't need the doctor," your counter is where that misunderstanding is either corrected or confirmed. The shop across the lane may not correct it. That is a reason for you to stock less of it and say more, not a reason to stock it.

  2. Omar Ragab

    Fellow

    I see the end of these stories in our hospital in Cairo: patients who arrive late because something cheaper and gentler was tried first.

    But I want to defend your father a little. "Someone else will" is a bad excuse for doing harm. It's a fair point when the question is whether your refusal achieves anything. If refusing changes nothing for the customer, the honest reason to refuse is about who you want to be. Williams would say that's not pride. It is the thing his whole example was meant to protect.