Ethical Issues in Direct-to-Consumer Advertising: Building Relationships of Trust

For this project I plan a research trip to The University of Arizona March 5—12, 2010, to work with faculty colleagues Don Fallis and Kay Mathiesen of the School of Information Resources and Library Science to prepare an Information Ethics article, “Ethical Issues in Direct-to-Consumer Advertising: Building Relationships of Trust”, for publication. In this paper I argue that, given the vulnerable position of consumers in health care decision-making, we can use both epistemic and ethical frameworks for representing and disseminating information to create more reliability and trust among consumers and health care stakeholders. This article is the culmination of research done for the European Conference for Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care (August 2009) and the 8th annual Information Ethics Roundtable, (February 26, 2010 at BSC). I will be relying on Fallis and Mathiesen’s expertise to help me use theoretical accounts of information, along with an ethical framework for use and misuse of information, to make recommendations for creating consumer trust in health care relationships