Ethics In Charlie Gordon's 'Flowers For Algernon'

In every facet of life, ethics is held with an importance unrivaled by any other aspect. In government, laws are made with ethics in mind, created in the purpose of upholding ethics. In technology, an individual’s information is treated ethically, encrypted and undistributed in hopes of preserving privacy. However, no other career values ethics as much as science. The bond between ethics and science was broken in “Flowers for Algernon”, where scientists Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur committed a violation against the principles of research ethics by conducting an experiment to test the limits of human intelligence. When the scientists performed an intelligence increasing operation on the intellectually disabled Charlie Gordon, the neglected several

In order for a participant to give informed consent, he/she must be given a full disclosure of the experiment and give assent without coercion (Emanuel Ej, Abdoler E and Stunkel L 6-7). Most important to the experiment, the subject must be competent, as described by the U.S government’s research standards : “First, the subject must be competent. This means that he or she is mentally capable of understanding the facts about the research and making a decision based on them.” (Emanuel et al., 6). Charlie, the subject of the experiment, is intellectually disabled to a degree such that he cannot comprehend a test given to analyze his personality, the Thematic Apperception Test. He expresses his confusion when met with the test by saying,“She said, make up storys about the pepul in the picturs. I told her how can you tell storys about people you have never met.I said why shud I make up lies”(Keyes March 7 ¶ 3). His improper grammar, and lack of understanding for a simple test at the age of 37 illustrates Charlie is intellectually disabled. Due to his mental disability, Charlie cannot give informed consent, since informed consent can only be given if the applicant is mentally capable, and if mentally incapable, a parent or guardian has to support the subject’s decision. Because Charlie lacks a parent or guardian, he cannot informed consent, and thus scientists Dr. Strauss and Dr.

Scientific validity, as the name entails, ensures that an experiment is scientifically valid - it abides by the scientific method, is reproducible, and unbiased (Emanuel et al., 4-5) . It also ensures that experiments are “long enough and include enough subjects to make the results convincing”, which is important for the accuracy of the data, and the subsequent conclusions from the data (Emanuel et al. 4-5). However, the experiment conducted in “Flowers for Algernon” lacks the amount of human subjects needed to collect credible and accurate data, since Charlie is the only human subject in the experiment. Because of that, the experiment violates scientific validity, and subsequently, Bioethics as a