Advancements in medical technology can be associated in great part to human experimentation. It is widely known that medicine created for humans, in order to be proven effective, must undergo human clinical trials. When this form of experimentation is voluntary it benefits all of humanity. It just so happens that unfortunately, sometimes volunteers are misinformed of the dangers of the trial or are tested without their knowledge. This world wide issue has been attempted to be remedied through laws and regulations, but loopholes can still be found within them. Time has proved to the world that these laws are simply not enough. Stricter laws should be enacted to prevent the world's history of unethical human experimentation from repeating itself. It is easy to forget just how serious is the issue of unethical human experimentation: most of the world lives in blissful ignorance of the tragedy of this practice or feel protected by the regulations put in place by state governments. Issues of human experimentation are usually glossed over or hidden. Covering up the issue, regulations, and public misinformation leads the majority to believe that corrupt human experimentation is no longer a danger. The reality of the matter is that immoral human testing happens in many countries, even those that are well developed medically. (Stobbe) In order to find wherein the problem lies, it is best to look at one of the most improbable places, the United States of America. The land of the free is probably thought to be the least likely place to find malpractice when it comes to the well being of its citizens, but the United State's history proves that it can be a hotbed of unethical testing. The dawn of human experimentation for the United States beg... ... middle of paper ... ...ublic Health Service Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) Inoculation Study."United States Department of Health and Human Services. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. "Five Survivors Found from Shocking U.S. Human Experiments." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 30 Aug. 2011. Web. 01 Dec. 2013. . Milloy, Steve. "MILLOY: Federal Judge Overturns EPA Human Experiments Case."Washington Times. The Washington Times, 13 Feb. 2013. Web. 01 Dec. 2013. . Stobbe, Mike. "Ugly past of U.S. Human Experiments Uncovered." Msnbc.com. National Broadcasting Company, 27 Feb. 2011. Web. 02 Dec. 2013. .
Those who were affected by the testing in hospitals, prisons, and mental health institutions were the patients/inmates as well as their families, Henrietta Lacks, the doctors performing the research and procedures, the actual institutions in which research was being held, and the human/health sciences field as a whole. Many ethical principles can be applied to these dilemmas: Reliance on Scientific Knowledge (1.01), Boundaries of Competence (1.02), Integrity (1.04), Professional and Scientific Relationships (1.05), Exploitative Relationships (1.07, a), Responsibility (2.02), Rights and Prerogatives of Clients (2.05), Maintaining Confidentiality (2.06), Maintaining Records (2.07), Disclosures (2.08), Treatment/Intervention Efficacy (2.09), Involving Clients in Planning and Consent (4.02), Promoting an Ethical Culture (7.01), Ethical Violations by Others and Risk of Harm (7.02), Avoiding False or Deceptive Statements (8.01), Conforming with Laws and Regulations (9.01), Characteristics of Responsible Research (9.02), Informed Consent (9.03), and Using Confidential Information for Didactic or Instructive Purposes (9.04), and Debriefing (9.05). These particular dilemmas were not really handled until much later when laws were passed that regulated the way human subjects could be used for research. Patients
When a person seeks medical attention they go with the hope that their personal rights will not be violated with the belief that doctors will uphold their personal standards. Unfortunately, this is not always so for people who visit the hospital. There are documented cases in United States history involving African Americans being experimented on for the greater good without their knowledge or consent, and some of the most heinous cases involve doctors injecting their study groups with life threatening diseases. What happens when good science goes bad and who has the right to relegate the status of another human being as less than? In this research paper we will examine a clinical testing case study featuring the violation and exploitation
Furthermore, these doctors had no legal or ethical codes to conduct experimentations or research on African Americans. For example, during 1998, “172 employees, all but one of them black, sued Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory when they learned that they had secretly been tested for syphilis, pregnancy, and sickle-cell trait without their knowledge that the blood and urine they had supplied during required physical examinations would be tested…” (314). This indicates that there was no consent from these blacks and scientists where secretively testing immunities for sickle-cell on them without any permission whatsoever. The release of this experiment was against the Americans with Disabilities Act and these researchers had no right to release information without the patient’s consent. Furthermore, experiments that had no patient’s consent varied from blisters “to see how deep black skin went” to threatening surgeries, sterilization, inoculations, and not tested pharmaceuticals (54). Without consent, all experiments are considered as unethical. A patient’s consent is important because it is huge determination of privacy and respecting the patient’s wishes. Without any consent, it is indicating that patient’s do not have rights about their own privacy, which was against the law during colonial times and in present days. Some ethical guidelines include the right to withdraw from the study
To teach to the test or trust the child; is the question in today’s education. Over the past twenty years state curriculum standards have changed. Teachers need to make the choice on how to teach the children in their classroom. In today’s society where testing runs the educational world, a teacher must decide how to prepare students for standardized testing.
When you here the words ‘human experimentation‘, you think lab coats, mad scientists, and monsters like Frankenstein. But the reality of it is much more gruesome. People just like you and me were used like guinea pigs. In many cultures, a doctor is thought of as a healer; a person who lives to save others. That was not the case of the physicians that severed for the labor camps in Poland. Human experimentation is sadly a horrific thing of our world’s past and is most commonly related to in the stories of testing taking place in Nazis concentration camps of World War Two. Nazis doctors took innocent people and performed grueling experiments on them for three specific reasons (United States Holocaust Museum).
In the United States, the basis for ethical protection for human research subjects in clinical research trials are outlined by the Belmont Report developed in the late 1970’s. This document, published by the Nation Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, highlights three important basic principles that are to be considered when any clinical trial will involve human research subjects. They are; respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. (Chadwick & Gunn, 2004)
Throughout history, beginning as early as 500 BC, animals have been used to test products that will later be utilized by humans (“Animal Testing” 4), what isn’t publicly discussed is the way it will leave the animals after the process is done. Many innocent rabbits, monkeys, mice, and even popular pets such as dogs are harmed during the testing application of cosmetics, medicine, perfumes, and many other consumer products (Donaldson 2). Nevertheless, there are many people whom support the scandal because "it is a legal requirement to carry out animal testing to ensure they are safe and effective” for human benefit (Drayson). The overall question here is should it even be an authorized form of experimentation in the United States, or anywhere else? The fact of the matter is that there are alternatives to remove animals out of the equation for good (“Alternatives” 1). They are cheaper, and less invasive than the maltreatment of the 26 million innocent animals that are subjected to the heartlessness of testing each year (“Animal Testing” 4). All in all, due to the harsh effects of animal testing, it should be treated as animal cruelty in today’s society.
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.
Using animals for medical experimentation, product testing, and education is a controversial subject that often leads to a large argument. While the problems can go into detail, the suffering involved in animal experimentation is painfully clear. Every year there are tens of millions of animals that die in federally and privately funded experiments. A projected 90 percent of all animals used in research are rats and mice, and many other species including guinea pigs, dogs, cats, rabbits, nonhuman primates, and farm animals are killed every year to animal testing. (UGA) The experimentation of animals and testing has not stopped because it is not the most accurate or reliable means of research, but because of the tradition, peer pressure, and large amounts of funding from those with strong invested interests into the business. (UGA)
Animal testing is a controversial topic with two main sides of the argument. The side apposing animal testing states it is unethical and inhumane; that animals have a right to choose where and how they live instead of being subjected to experiments. The view is that all living organism have a right of freedom; it is a right, not a privilege. The side for animal testing thinks that it should continue, without animal testing there would be fewer medical and scientific breakthroughs. This side states that the outcome is worth the investment of testing on animals. The argument surrounding animal testing is older than the United States of America, dating back to the 1650’s when Edmund O’Meara stated that vivisection, the dissection of live animals, is an unnatural act. Although this is one of the first major oppositions to animal testing, animal testing was being practiced for millennia beforehand. There are two sides apposing each other in the argument of animal testing, and the argument is one of the oldest arguments still being debated today.
Since experiments are cruel and expensive, “the world’s most forward-thinking scientists have moved on to develop and use methods for studying diseases and testing products that replace animals and are actually relevant to human health” (“Alternatives to Animals”). Companies claim that this sort of cruelty will benefit the human population by testing the “safety” of the products, as they have been for hundreds of years, and although this may have been helpful in the past, scientists have discovered otherwise. “While funding for animal experimentation and the number of animals tested on continues to increase, the United States still ranks 49th in the world in life expectancy and second worst in infant mortality in the developed world” (“Animal Testing Is”). This evidence shows that while we still continue to support and spend money on animal testing, it is not working as well as we thought.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1976. Call Number: HV4711.A56. American Medical Association. The “Animal Experimentation Benefits Human Health”. Animal Rights Opposing Viewpoints?
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 reasons I think experimenting on humans is unethical is because the Electroshock Therapy on Children, Project Artichoke, and the Monster Study. I only picked these three because I think they really say that human experimentation is wrong.
Animals are used in research to develop new medicines and for scientists to test the safety of the medicines. This animal testing is called vivisection. Research is being carried out at universities, medical schools and even in primary and elementary schools as well as in commercial facilities which provide animal experiments to industry. (UK Parliament) In addition, animals are also used in cosmetic testing, toxicology tests, “defense research” and “xenotransplantation”. All around the world, a huge amount of animals are sentenced to life in a laboratory cage and they are obliged to feel loneliness and pain. In addition scientists causing pain, most drugs that pas successfully in animals fail in humans. It is qualified as a bad science. Above all, animals have rights not to be harmed even though the Animal Welfare Act does not provide them even with minimal protection. The law does not find it necessary to use current alternatives to animals, even if they are obtainable. Animal testing should be banned due to animal rights, ethical issues, alternative ways and the unreliability of test results in humans.