Ethics and economics are not mutually exclusive, but rather related concepts that help the human race in dealing with scarce resources. Safeguarding the resources employed and making a profit are general industrial objectives. Product-specific objectives, such as optimising medicinal safety and creating benefits for the individual and society, are discussed. Healing disease, improving quality of life and prolonging length of life are very important considerations. The contributions of the pharmaceutical industry in fulfilling ethically based demands will be primarily treated as the careful use of resources (e.g. by renunciation of state support). Other ethical contributions are the early communication of research results for intersectoral use and a voluntary code of conduct to regulate the actions of pharmaceutical companies with regard to information and advertising. In the Third World pharmaceutical industry is mainly faced to potential waste of valuable medicines, due to insufficient infrastructure of logistics and distribution capacities in one region, given a shortage of these very medicines in other and better structured regions. The value of medicines is defined by a comparison of competing therapies (difference in consumption of resources). Possible ethical deficiencies arising from a lack of direct contact of the patient with industry and the quasi-penalisation of patients because of faulty lifestyle are briefly discussed.