There really is a need for a global legal regime, or international law to govern product liability matters.

Running Head : There really is a need for a global legal regime or international law to govern product liability matters

Global legal regime or international law to govern product liability

Authors Name

Institution Name There are fundamental values that international companies must uphold them

Thomas Donaldson

Corporations must learn to work with an even stronger sense of ethics and of responsibility of their own actions

Schoichiro Toyoda

Back ground and historical context

Today , environmental impact is considered in product development manufacturing , packaging , and marketing all over many other

industries And due to international trade all industrial democracies have recognized regulatory regimes to control the testing , manufacture , and marketing of pharmaceutical , biological , and medical device products The damaging side effects of products such as thalidomide demonstrated that consumers and health care professionals cannot completely evaluate the safety of products that they use on a daily basis , and that liability law can not always provide sufficient added incentives for manufacturers to test for and retain the highest standards of quality control (Christopher Curran , 1992 . Government regulation attempts to fill up that gap for therapeutics by requiring extensive pre-market research and testing concerning the safety , quality , and effectiveness of new pharmaceutical and biological products , as well as controls on sanitary conditions and quality assurance throughout manufacture

Due to International market , governments impose special regulations on the manufacture and authorization of biologics because , compared with pharmaceuticals , they are chemically less established , more heat- and shear-sensitive , difficult to assay , and more subject to contagion Contaminated intravenous medicines can quickly spread disease and even cause death

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the 1920s 'a national culture of utilization emerged ' in the United States . This was obviously a prerequisite of any consumer movement . At the same time , there was the growth of the Progressive Movement ( Barbrook and Bolt 1980 ) which although mainly concerned with corruption of government , raised the issue of the supremacy of producers . People like Upton Sinclair in the United States highlighted issues of dement of food and this led to increased food regulation ( Forbes 1987 : 4 . Likewise , abuses of the monopoly place of the railways led to the development of the Interstate Commerce Commission as the first regulatory authority for protecting consumers ( Nadel 1971 : 22 . In Britain , similar questions were raised concerning food adulteration ( Burnett 1989 ) and the cooperative movement started in to organize and reinforce the market position of consumers (Tivey 1974 . However , at this time there were no consumer groups as such and any consumer regulation was to care for the consumer from direct physical or economic harm ( Nadel 1971 : 7

In Britain , it was not until 1957 that the Consumers ' Association (CA became the first national product testing organization . The Consumers Association was recognized as a response to consumerism in the United States and the failure of the government to create a consumer advisory service ( The Times 5 October 1978 . It also revealed the growing concern with consumer issues in Britain . The Consumers ' Association was instigated with...