New medicine and medical procedures are being developed every day, and even with the entire research put into them there is only one sure way to ensure effectiveness. Medical experimentation, while controversial at times, is the best way to gather results on the safety of a drug and its ability to produce the expected results. Everything in healthcare as we know it goes through some form of experimentation whether it is physically or mentally. Medical studies performed are most commonly about drugs and their effects on people. Equipment, emotions, and relationships are all subjects of studies and experiments. Psychological studies are being held every day, by psychologists and aspiring ones alike. Any idea that someone has about two things interacting in some way can be the subject of a study. There are many different types of including clinical trials, case-control studies, cohort studies, and laboratory trials. The studies can be simple as a taking a survey or prolonged interaction with a stimulus in a controlled setting. Medical studies are often drawn its participants through monetary compensation, or the hope that it will solve a medical problem. It doesn't matter whether its people with low income that just needs some extra cash or someone that is having …show more content…
trouble controlling their blood sugar, medical studies draw people from all walks of life. I know of people that participated in studies during college, often for cash. In my experience, I participated in psychological studies for extra credit in school. Research participants are protected by regulations set in place for their safety.
The federal government requires that researchers follow these guidelines under persecution of the law. The Department of Health and Human Services (2009), states that pregnant women and their fetuses, children and prisoners are also protected under these rights. Ethics committies are also responsible for participant safety. According to Jacobsen (2014) “Review boards will not approve studies that do not meet the three main ethical considerations of health research: beneficence, respect for persons, and distributive justice” (p. 52). These three ethical considerations protect patient’s rights and
well-being. Beneficence ensures that health research projects are beneficial to both the participants and their communities. Respect for persons includes two areas, autonomy and informed consent. According to Jacobsen (2014), autonomy is the right for participants to choose whether or not to be a part of a study. Informed consent is making sure that participants have all the information needed to make an informed decision about the study. This includes risks and benefits associated with the process, as well as an outline of the schedule and procedures. “Distributive justice aims to ensure that the populations that bear the risks of research participation have access to the benefits of that research” (Jacobsen, 2014, p. 53). This means that those who participated and accepted the risks associated with the experiments, should be able to benefit from the results. Medical studies enable its participants to be at the forefront of possible medical breakthroughs. Some people search for a cure or explanation of their issues and behaviors, and these studies enable them to find solutions. Many people around the world can benefit from the results found by studying others. References Department of Health and Human Services. (2009). Code of Federal Regulations. Retrieved from http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html Jacobsen, K. H. (2014). Introduction to global health (2nd ed., pp. 52-53). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Pub.
Third world countries and underdeveloped nations have become the new proverbial Petri dish of experimentation and offer particular conditions which researchers would never be able to find in their home countries. This only serves to highlight the problem that inherently faces all research studies, the ethical debate in regards to the protection and rights of their subjects. Is it feasible to expect the same standards to apply in certain countries where an economical imbalance between what is possible and what is not can be the largest hurdle to overcome? These are key issues examined in the New England Journal of Medicine by author Marcia Angell, M.D., and co-authors Harold Varmus, M.D. and David Satcher, M.D. in their respective articles that consider the ethical standards that should prevail in such circumstances. Should researchers be upheld to universal standards, or are the standards more applicable in a “local” sense, where the conditions and the constraints of the location provide the context for how the principles should be applied?
The author explains how randomized clinical trials put physicians in ethically intolerable positions of choosing between the good of the patient and that of society. A kantian argument is formed when the author explains how the physician has the duty to tell the truth and not use the patient as a mere means to satisfy the needs of a majority. The well being of the patient is far more important than that of the society when it comes to treatment by personal physician, the Author suggests that there should be alternatives to randomized clinical trials to deal with observer bias and patient selection. The overall message of the article stresses the importance of a patient’s well being over the well being of a society because the physician has the duty to help the patient improve his/her health.
Coleman, C. (2005). The ethics and regulation of research with human subjects. 3–50.50 Code of Federal Regulations, 46(102).
The scientific method is how psychologists gain knowledge about the mind and behavior. It is used by all scientists. The experimental method is the one way to engage the scientific method, and the only way to find a cause and effect in relationships. It is summarized in five steps, observing some phenomenon in the world, forming a hypothesis which is an educated prediction about relationships between two or more variables, examining the gathered information by using empirical research, determining what the results are and drawing them, and evaluating the results whether it will support the hypothesis or not. Researchers, at the end, submit their work for publication for all to see and read (King, 2016). There are three types of psychological research in the scientific method, descriptive research, correlation, and experimental research (King, 2016). The article The Effects of Negative Body Talk in an Ethnically Diverse Sample of College Students (Katrevich, Register, & Aruguete, 2014) is an example of the experimental method.
To sum things up, the ethical demeanor of research involves respect for the safety and rights of subjects during the sequence of the trial. This includes protecting privacy and confidentiality, monitoring the condition of research subjects to assure their safety, terminating study participation in the case of hostile events, and notifying enrolled subjects about new risks, benefits, or other information that may bear upon subjects’ decisions to continue enrollment in the research. As new evidence shows itself, trial investigators and data safety monitoring boards (DSMBs) can alter the study plan, initiate notice of enrolled subjects, make changes to the informed consent policies, or stop the trials earlier than intended. Investigators should soon classify a technique for ensuring effective communication between the IRB and DSMB throughout these studies.
Human medical experiments are also known as human subject research. The Department of Health and Human Services describes a human research subject as a living person whom a researcher obtains data from. Human subject research is basically an experiment that is conducted to be used as research or clinically oriented that involves the use of humans for the experimentation. It involves both the gathering and evaluation of the information collected to answer a specific question. Some examples of clinically oriented studies include the analysis of biological specimens, epidemiological and behavioral studies. Some examples of research oriented studies include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires. Human subject studies are used in various fields, including research on basic biology, clinical medicine, nursing, psychology, sociology, political science, and anthropology.
The Belmont Report distinguishes three center moral standards in regards to all human subject experimentation: autonomy, respect for persons, beneficence and justice. Autonomy alludes to the right of an individual to determine what they will or will not partake in. Respect for persons requires medical researchers to obtain informed consent from their subjects, which means that participants must be given precise information about their circumstances and treatment options so that they can decide what is best for them. Beneficence means that all test subjects must be informed about the advantages as well as all the possible risks of the treatment(s) they consent to participate in. The principle of justice includes individual and societal justice.
Medical research involving human subjects is historically riddled with unethical experiments leading to harmful and even fatal consequences for participants. In order to avoid this in modern medical research, a system of medical ethics has been created. To properly review these standards for experimentation proposals, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) were established in the United States. Although this system of ethics and review processes is tedious and difficult to appeal to, it is fundamental to ensuring the safety of all human participants consenting to medical research. Continuing medical research on human subjects, while conforming to the medical ethics and review processes deemed necessary by the government and the Internal Review
Other doctors also performed “placebo experiments'; to realize if it really works. One example would be of the experiments led by Edmunds G. Diamond of the University of Kansas Medical Center in the 1950’s. His research involved the surgery to treat angina pectoris. He had a set of 18 patients suffering from this ailment have common surgery to relieve this symptom. In 13 of the patients, the doctors actually performed the operation, however in the other five, all they did was make an incision in the chest and sew it back up.
During years, animals have been scientifically used to experiment with the purpose of testing medicines, to develop new cures and to support the scientific advancements. Animal testing is needed to preserve human life. Is why experimentation for medical purposes should be carried out, instead of scientists performing dangerous test in humans.
Clinical trial is biomedical or health related research studies in human being that follow a pre-defined protocol. Research is an activity designed to test a hypothesis that helps in concluding and developing knowledge. It is a protocol that has an objectives and procedures to reach those objectives (1). There are two types of clinical studies. One is interventional studies in which the research subjects are assigned by the investigator to a treatment or other intervention, and their outcomes are measured. Second is an observational study in which individuals are observed and their outcomes are measured by the investigators.
Throughout centuries medical research has been conducted on animals. “Animals were used in early studies to discover how blood circulates through the body, the effect of anesthesia, and the relationship between bacteria and disease” (AMA 59). Experiments such as these seem to be outdated and actually are by today’s means, scientists now study commonly for three general purposes: (1) biomedical and behavioral research, (2) education, (3) drug and product testing (AMA 60). These three types of experiments allow scientists to gain vast amounts of knowledge about human b...
Unethical experiments have occurred long before people considered it was wrong. The protagonist of the practice of human experimentation justify their views on the basis that such experiments yield results for the good of society that are unprocurable by other methods or means of study ( Vollmann 1448 ).The reasons for the experiments were to understand, prevent, and treat disease, and often there is not a substitute for a human subject. This is true for study of illnesses such as depression, delusional states that manifest themselves partly by altering human subjectivity, and impairing cognitive functioning. Concluding, some experiments have the tendency to destroy the lives of the humans that have been experimented on.
The dark history of human experimentation began with the clarification between experimentation and treatment. The larger public began to notice experimenters ethical neglect for their subjects in the early 1960s. Those charged with administering research funding took note of the public furor generated by the exposure of gross abuses in medical research. These included uncontrolled promotional distribution of thalidomide throughout the United States, labeled as an experimental drug; the administration of cancer cells to senile and debilitated patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital; and the uncontrolled distribution of LSD to children at Harvard Medical Center through Professors Alpert and Leary. Most important was Henry Beechers 1966 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, detaili...
Following the ethical codes and getting approval from the Institutional Review Board (if the study has human subjects) can really decrease the possibility of any harm being done to the participants. A perfect example of a research study that had lots of things unethical practices was the Tuskegee Syphilis study: