Improving ‘Consumer Protection’ with Buddhist Ethics: Necessity, Possibility and Challenge

Abstract

This article primarily aims to draw attention to the concept of consumer protection in health care and the drug regulatory system. Consumer protection originated in the Western tradition and later it became a consumer protection model adopted by countries all over the world. However, it has been challenged when consumers have encountered the various unethical drug marketing strategies of the pharmaceutical industry. Modern advertising and aggressive drug marketing have considerably contributed to and stimulated mixed feelings of greed, fear and delusion so that consumers’ minds have become weak and vulnerable. Meanwhile, the minds of physicians and the drug regulators have been more or less influenced. National drug regulatory systems have been inevitably undermined. Consequently, this concept needs to be reexamined and improved. Overall, the article provides a theoretical investigation of two fundamental moral principles of consumer protection, one based on Western ethics as the foundation of the original concept and the other a new approach applied from the principles of Buddhism. This article is designed to discuss the advantages and limitations of a moral foundation to the concept for consumer protection and to propose possible Buddhist ways of improvement, particularly in strengthening the mind in order to prevent patients, consumers, physicians, regulators, producers and others related to the drug regulatory system from mind manipulation by consumerism in a consumer society.