Before 1962, there were no laws or guidelines that doctors had to follow when taking and using human cells. Ruth Faden, director of Johns Hopkins University says, "It's a sad commentary on how the biomedical research community thought about research in the 50's, but it was not at all uncommon for physicians to conduct research on patients without their knowledge or consent" (Skloot, "Cells," 2001). The researchers were not trying to be immoral, but they did not see anything wrong with taking tissue samples without consent, as long as the patient was not hurt. During that era, the researchers would forget about the patient once they had obtained a cell sample. They did not think about the fact that when conducting experiments, the cells they were using came from actual people.
“In 1999, president Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) issued a report saying that federal oversight of tissue research is “inadequate” and “ambiguous”. It recommended specific changes that would ensure patients’ rights to control how their tissues were being used.” (page 327). Unfortunately, the changes were never made and scientists still have the ability to conduct research on one’s tissues without consent. The reason for why the changes were nullified remain unknown even to Wayne Grody an individual “who was in thick of the debate in the nineties, (for) why the congressional recommendations and NBAC report seemed to have vanished.”.
September 29, 2017 Officer Beckman, Supervisor Manley County Probation Department 555 Chestnut Lane Bouldercreek, GA 28394 Dear Officer Beckman: When it comes to life outcomes for any given person, there are unlimited people, circumstances, and personal choices that can affect a person and the life that they may lead for themselves. When trying to understand the details that produce any final result, the truth of the matter can be messy, complicated, and sometimes unclear. In most cases, there is not any one thing that caused a downward spiral or an upward shot, but rather a sequence of events, a plethora of circumstances, and a wide variety of people.
Is it right for one's life to be manipulated for the use of scientific research or is it just a evasion on the person's privacy. Henrietta Lacks was a African American with cells that intrigued many people, she was diagnosed with cancer leaving her to be cared for at her local hospital, where she would later die due to the extremity of the illness. While at the hospital she was unaware that the doctors there were experimenting on her taking cell samples from her body, to help find a resolution to multiple diseases. The people who examined Henrietta manipulated her and the rest of her family to gain information on her cellular structure to be ahead of others looking to achieve the same objective. Henrietta Lacks cells should have never been evaluated because it's an evasion of her freedom, a danger to her personal health, and cause conflicts.
The fact that so many of the former scientists were guilty of their experiments proves their unethical nature, and how horrible the experiments really
This study was passed and funded through Congress; however they did not know the full story. The wrong in this study was that the men did not give informed consent and did not receive any treatment. The men were studied till their autopsy, which is obviously death. This sparked much controversy and changed human experimentation forever.
The job of the “Commission was to identify the basic ethical principles that should underlie the conduct of biomedical and behavioral research involving human subjects and to develop guidelines which should be followed to assure that such research is conducted in accordance with those principles.” (The National Commission for the Protection of Human
Even though the Nuremberg Code- a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation- didn’t technically apply to the United States, many doctors, scientists, and other physicians felt the need to morally abide by this rule. On the other hand, some doctors like Southam and Bjorklund didn’t feel the moral need to follow this code, which resulted in Bertil Bjorklund’s lab being shut down and Southam’s license being suspended for a year. For example, in the novel “The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, it states, “Bertil Björklund. He’d been giving himself and patient’s intravenous injections of vaccines made from HeLa cells… Bjorklund’s HeLa injections got him expelled from his laboratory...
After World War Two and the Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners, the Nuremberg code was developed for the use of humans in scientific research. The code centered on human consent and safety, with successful trials with animals prior to using humans. However, most doctors in the U.S felt the code didn't t apply to them, that they were above the international code. In Henrietta’s day, there weren’t laws that protected research participants. In her time, it wasn't mandatory for doctors to have patients sign consent forms.
In the context of medical research, informed consent provides individuals with the opportunity to accept or decline involvement in research, and thereby adheres to their right to choose. Obtaining consent from donors is not limited to simply seeking permission, but involves explaining the nature and consequences of research in an honest and understandable manner. When this aspect of informed consent is ignored, unethical research ensues. For example, during the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, US Public Health researchers studied the progression of syphilis in African American men, under the false pretense of curing their “bad blood”. Though a treatment of penicillin was available at the time, researchers idly observed as subjects died painful, preventable deaths.
Website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/experiside.html Driving Question: Should Nazi experiments be used for scientific research? Hypotheses: I do not think these experiments should be used for scientific research because a lot of these experiments were not justifiable and were not conduct appropriately or have the participants consent. Observations: We noticed that a lot of the experiments were conducted in an interpenetrate way as well as very inhumane.
Ethical issues will always be an issue in psychological research and in most cases there will always have to be some sort of trade off of ethics to get reliable results. Research such as that conducted by Milgram and Zimbardo brought this issue to light inside the psychological circles around the world and caused issues such as these to be brought into the public eye. It is because of such research that comities exist today to govern the content of such experiments. Several different issues were raised in Milgram and Zimbardos research in particular, the first and most obvious issue is one that is common in most, if not all psychological experiments; Deception and informed consent. In Milgrams experiment for example his participants were told that they would be involved with a study into the effects of punishment on learning, this effectively denied the participants giving informed consent as they did not know the true nature of the experiment.
The three most important things I have learned in this class is the Nuremberg code, good questions, and types of research. The Nuremberg code is 10 principals that protects the rights of research subjects. In the late 1940s, physicians abused their power in research by forcing people to drink seawater, prisoners were placed in vacuum chambers, and physicians performed limb and bone transplant for people who had no medical needs. These events horrified the world and the Nuremberg code was created so humans are protected and does not have to be at risk of any serious harm. As researchers, it is important to apply ethical standards; therefore, humans are respected and not receiving any harm or risks to their health unwillingly.
Any study that involves subjects concerning human beings should be approved first from the ethics committee before being effected (Chiarelli & Cockburn, 2002). Further, if the paper ever sought for ethical approval is not being mentioned in any section of the article concerning its ethical issues. This is one of the pitfalls noticed at the beginning of the
An all-encompassing list of ethical standards one must abide by in the world of research can be found on the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ website. According to an
