Biomet's Social Responsibility

Biomet is a corporation that provides orthopedic surgical solutions such as biomaterials, implants and other surgical tools. Concerns about their corporate and social responsibility is of natural interest to present and potential investors, employers and those who care about the present state of healthcare ethics in the United States and around the world.

Charitable Giving

• Biomet makes considerable charitable donations. Last year, it announced that it is one of the main national sponsors for The Arthritis Foundation and the Foundation's Arthritis Walk, which it has now supported for over five years. The Arthritis Foundation has provided over $415 million to arthritis research. While this is a generous charitable partnership on one hand, it is also directly supportive of Biomet's interests; if it supports arthritis research, it can support conclusions that orthopedic surgery is a favored solution.

Leading Research

• Biomet takes care to address concerns of conflicts of interest in clinical research support. Its blog addresses a Columbia Journal of Medicine article that points out the inherent bias in the healthcare industry paying for healthcare research. While the blog article mentions that Biomet agrees with the Journal, its conclusion is that the solution to biased clinical research is to include "private innovators," roundly defined later as companies who realize the long-term economic value in returning people to work and getting them off government benefits or subsidies. Again, this could be seen as genuine concern for the welfare of injured people and their return to a normal quality of life or it could be a simple toss of its hat into the ring for inclusion in leading clinical research towards results favorable to its business model.

Encouraging Surgery

• Sometimes, surgery is the best option for someone who is injured or in deteriorating health; other times, surgery is a way for hospitals, surgeons and surgery support companies like Biomet to make millions of dollars with little or no concern for patients. Biomet does not take a stance on its website as to how necessary it feels surgery it is -- it necessarily cannot, because each patient deserves unique attention. The company did, however, commit in 2011 to donate $1.3 million to the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) to support graduate medical studies for orthopedic surgeons. Once more, on its face, this is generous and responsible; Biomet's products cannot help patients without qualified surgeons to repair people, but it cannot sell its products without surgeons, either.

Responsiveness

• Biomet's responsiveness is an important factor in its social responsibility. A company that carries such an important responsibility must answer to the public -- if not because of laws, then because of ethics. Biomet makes considerable use of its blog to address ethical issues such as conflicts of interest, the overall state of the healthcare machine, how it feeds itself financially and other topics. It did not, however, respond to a risk self-assessment as reported by Calvert, a leading socially responsible investment (SRI) firm. This failure to respond could mean nothing; the company might have been too busy to prioritize the questionnaire or have a policy of speaking only through formal channels agreed upon by its Board of Directors. Nothing requires Biomet to respond to informal disclosure requests.