1999 Infants Under Pressure Summary

The article “IEEE Case 1999: Infants under pressure”, describes an unethical scenario in which an engineer in MedTech was fired because he argued with his manager about a flawed product and threatened to report it to a regulatory agency. The article insinuates that company did not agree with Sam Wilson on product quality so they fired him. In this instance, the consensus on the ethicality of the company’s action would be that they were being unethical because they did not worry about the potential endangerment of dangerously high pressured infant lungs. Due to the actions against Sam Wilson from the company, it was inferred that they cared more about the profits that could be made rather than redesigning the product and admitting they made …show more content…
However, a major question that was presented to me during my analysis of the article was the motive; why did the manager not remedy the problem when all it required was a simple repositioning of a valve? Another question would be why did the president of MedTech take the immediate step of firing the employee without investigating the issue further? It seems as if this case was too vague and did not have all the necessary information to pass judgement quickly. If I were the authority of this matter, I would try to investigate the entire situation with complete evidence of the situation because it seems there may be reporter bias in this article. Understanding the “why” in this scenario and not just the “who” would lead to better results in understanding where this company crossed the line ethically. Although, we still do not completely understand the motive behind the company’s actions, we still know that they broke the ethical guideline of prioritizing patient safety. Companies, such as this one, usually promote profit over