Joe Reitz figures there will be widespread interest in a lecture tonight at Kansas University.

The topic: ethics in the pharmaceutical industry.

“Everybody I know is on some kind of a drug,” said Reitz, director of the International Center for Ethics in Business at KU. “If you’re not, you’re going to be when you get older.”

Klaus Leisinger, president and CEO of the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development, likely will discuss whether the United States should allow the purchase of Canadian drugs and whether the industry should open the market up to more genetic medications.

Leisinger will deliver the annual Walter S. Sutton Ethics Lecture at 7 tonight in Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The title is “Human Rights and Business: Corporate Ethics Challenges for the Pharmaceutical Industry.” Reitz said he expected a variety of topics to be covered.

“I imagine he’ll be talking about pricing issues, making drugs available, competition in the industry, patents and those kinds of things,” Reitz said.

The Novartis Foundation, the philanthropical arm of Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., works on such issues as disease prevention and treatment with the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

Leisinger is the foundation’s executive director, member of the board of trustees, delegate and president. He also is professor of sociology at the University of Basel in Switzerland and an adviser to the U.N. Development Program and the World Bank.

The Sutton Ethics Lecture has been delivered since 1993 under the KU School of Business.