The medical techniques used today are probably discovered by experimenting on a test subject. Occasionally, the test subject may be a living being such as an animal or a cell, but it could also be another human being. Now, experimentation on other human beings without their consent is considered unethical medical research. However, if a volunteer has been warned about all of the health risks and gave the researchers permission to conduct the experiment anyway, then it would be a legal study. Disregarding the researches that have willing participants, there are quite a few that quite literally, torture the participants. More often than not, most of these victims were unwilling participants. Frequently, most of these unethical experiments are done because of a prevalent prejudice. Still, not all of these researches are done out of just prejudice. It could be just be morbid curiosity. Unethical medical studies have appeared throughout history, but some of the more notorious unethical medical studies are the Nazi’s medical experiments, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and Willowbrook. There are more recent ones, but they don’t seem to be based off of prejudice as much. For example, a recent study that was deemed unethical would be the study on how different amount of oxygen given to premature babies affected the child. That specific study had a high risk that the premature child could die during the experimentation or become permanently blind. As mentioned before, not all unethical medical experiments that have been conducted are just done as a result of prejudice. The Nazis and the Willowbrook study are both unscrupulous, but there is one major difference. The Nazis justified their experiments to themselves and others by claiming that th...
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...harav, Vera Hassner. “Human Experiments: A Chronology of Human Research" A
Chronology of Human Research - Vera Sharav. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Tuskegee University. "About the USPHS Syphilis Study." Tuskegee University.
Tuskegee University, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Nazi Medical Experiments." United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 08 Mar. 2014.
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The Tuskegee Experiment is one of the unethical Health Researches done in the United States. The way the research was conducted was against people 's civil rights. Totally secretive and without any objectives, procedures or guidance from any government agency. During the time that the project was launched there were very few laws that protected the public from medical malpractice or from plainly negligence. Also the Civil Rights act did not pass until the 1960 's.
"Nazi Medical Experimentation: The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments." The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013.
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)
Since the inception of this mode of research, peoples’ perception of what constitutes moral behavior towards patients and specifically harvesting cells from patients has changed. Over time, other doctors would take cells from patients without patient consent and use them for research. Coming from this, people began to think about how ethical this was, and especially if the potential for scientific or medical advances outweighs the injustices imposed by the lack of obtaining patient consent. One could argue that in the area of ethical behavior and medical advances, it might be necessary and acceptable to take cells or tissue samples without patient consent. And even though these cells and the research of these cells might not affect the patient, what advantages and disadvantages could come from obtaining or not obtaining patient consent?
What justifies a physician experimenting on another human being? Some researchers believe it is racial superiority. At the time that African Americans were viewed as lesser as whites, some institutions were
Potential grave consequences that can result from irresponsible, or criminal, medical experiments. While we must be vigilant to protect innocent victims from such experimentation we cannot let that stifle our duty to continue making advances in healthcare and improving the lives of patients.
Animal testing began when William Harvey used animals 400 years ago to find out how blood circulated through the body. The "modern" era of animal research however started about 150 years ago with the rise of physiology as a science. It was very different back then. There were no anesthetics or effective painkillers, so the animals suffered a great deal, as did patients. Scientists learned that putting animals, or humans through that type of torture was inhumane. Consider having to have a leg amputated, which was not uncommon in those days due to the fact that infections got very severe without the use of antibiotics, without even so much as an anesthetic to control the pain. Now the treatment is there to help the pain, so neither human nor animal has to go through the excess undue strain. Through all the new medical technology still there will be people who disagree with animal testing. Animal testing provides many benefits that looked over most of the time. One of the most common questions is, “why are animals used in research?” The answer to that question can be broken down into three separate categories.
A law that many of us seem to be breaking; testing on animals for our own benefit is quite possibly the most disgusting thing any of us could take part in. Surely any self-aware being would be conscious of the crime being committed the universal felony of putting another being behind your own selfish desires. Excuses like “it’s for the greater good” and “we are above animals” are grotesque. If torture is for the greater good, then I’m not so sure that the greater good is something I want to see. Curing diseases at the cost of animal lives is immoral, and nobody has the right to make that decision.
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
Growing up in a very accepting and forward home, I always found myself to be free of most bias. Having been the target of some racial prejudice in the past, I always told myself that I would make sure nobody else had to feel the same way. While this may be a great way to think, it really only covers the fact that you will not have any explicit bias. What I have realized during the course of this class is that implicit bias often has a much stronger effect on us than we might think, and even the most conscious people can be affected.
The history of animal experimentation and tests, and the argument surrounding it, has an expansive and somewhat extensive history. Some of the first medical research that was conducted on living animals was done by Aelius Galenus, better known as Galen, in the second century C.E. There have been examples of animal testing in earlier dates, but Galen devoted his life to understanding science and medicine, so he is attributed to being the father of vivisection. In the twelfth century, an Arabic physician named Avenzoar introduced animal testing dissections as a means to better understand surgery before preforming the operation on a human patient. Edmund O’Meara made one of the first opposing ar...
Rothman, D.J. (1987). Ethics and human experimentation. New England Journal of Medicine, 317: 1195- 9.
...e were done just so doctors, like Josef Mengele, could answer their own questions. All of these show the cruelty that the world could and still can have just because they hate somebody or they are interested in finding something, but we learn about these past experiences so that they never happen again.
While there are certain rights in place for humans there also needs to be certain set in place to benefit the animals that are being tested and killed on a daily basis. “In part II of Animals Experimentation the writer specifies harming the animal is highly undesirable and should not be done unless justified. Experiments can be justified if the social good derived from them actively outweighs the negative aspect of harming a sensitive creature.”(Pal T. Part II) While the ways that have been mentioned above are unethical scientist should resort to finding alternative ways in making scientific advancement whether it’s through medicine, research, or science. Many will agree that the brutal killing of these animals is downright immoral when it comes to ethical code and
The growth of the medical research field is a significant development for the human species. New treatments are established to treat many diseases. Although the expansion of the medical research field benefits the human society in many areas, the ethical issue of using animals as testing subjects is often neglected. During this procedure, animals are used to experiment on in the place of humans to ensure the effectiveness of the discoveries and treatments. These processes are not always successful and therefore will often cause excessive pain and distress to the animals. Many animals suffer greatly and may even result in death. It is morally wrong to cause pain or distress to animals in the course of medical research because animals should have the right for welfare and live a pleasurable life thus; we should not harm them during the research process. In this paper I will defend this argument and provide a discussion on this issue by providing arguments supporting my thesis and as well as addressing a counterargument.