dow corning
This case explores the set of original design decisions that led to the creation, manufacture, and marketing of implants and what was entailed in their subsequent redesign and alleged improvement.
If the independent epidemiological data continues to be consistenet with a multitude of present fidings, it will turn out, just as Dow Corning has claimed, that the casual relationship between breast implants and disease is, at worst, a very weak correlation. "The best evidence now is a relative risk of 1.0, indicating no contribution of implants to the disease (Angell, 1996, p. 197)." Yet despite what happens from a scientific and engineering point of view to be "good scientific evidence," and despite the fact that Dow Corning engineers and managers acted virtuously according to professional scientific and engineering standards, this company has been sued for over four billion dollars in a class action suit involving 440,000 women, and is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
This case illustrates the importance of design decisions for the development and future use of a product. They also raise questions about moral imagination, because they exemplify what can happen legally as well as morally when one has a product such as a breast implant where one does not take into account the perspective of women who received the implant nor the added difficulties of doing business in our litigious and media-driven society.
Follow-up to Case A, with emphasis on a Dow Corning's reaction to increased regulation and changing federal and scientific community standards for testing of medical products, such as implants.
Follow-up to Case B, focusing on the role of the Food and Drug Administration in deciding to remove products, such as implants, from the market.