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Nobody wants to say that the good of many is unimportant when it comes to what they want out of fear of sounding selfish. But let’s be honest. Is it really okay to completely violate someone’s right to their own body just to help science? From all the good that came from this violation of rights many are tempted to say yes. From a utilitarian point of view where weighing the costs and benefits of alternative course of actions leads to a decision that maximizes the general benefit to the community and minimizes the impact and drawbacks to whoever may be involved, it seems almost like it is acceptable to say that the scientists did nothing wrong.
One day at the John Hopkins hospital, her cells were taken from her without permission. She didn’t know that walking in that hospital that day, would change the way medical research is going nowadays. The legalities are undeniably in check. However, the ethics behind Henrietta’s story are not. Henrietta signed a waiver that gave the scientists to do things if they feel it will help her.
“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.”.
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.
Patient care is based around the individual- their best interest, treatment, and health concerns. Research is based around furthering knowledge within the medical world, by testing on people, and improving lives for future patients. In Henrietta’s case, she went to John Hopkins with the plan of being treated as a patient only, and was used for research, without education or consent. Making only a small effort to relieve her pain through radiation treatment, the physicians removed cells from Henrietta’s cervix to use in later studies. There is another line blurred, as Spigner, a University of Washington professor makes a point, stating, “The life and death of Henrietta Lacks is a cautionary tale that reflects the inherent contradiction between the stated purpose of medical research to provide benefit to humankind and the reality of blatant profiteering in the name of the advancement of science” (12).
Charles Neumann is a very negligent man when it came to his experiments bad he completely ignored the ethical. Charles was not limited to the experiments he could do unless Cassandra Cautery, who is a middle manager, halts him. One example when he ignored these boundaries is when he cut off his second leg. He could have simply worked on making better legs on a different animal such as a dog, or simply just improve his one prosthetic leg. Not only does it cost “Better Future” money, it could cause them shut down.
However, individual have a right to ask the researcher any questions they may have; they also have a right to contact the IRB. Like I stated earlier changes are wonderful and sometimes in life something bad/unethical has to happen to someone as in the story about Henrietta’s Lacks for changes to come about. Although it took more than 60 years to fully acknowledge the origin and history of Henrietta’s cells, it is reassuring to see that efforts are now being made to ensure that her family’s best interest remains at the forefront of future research. (Martinez,
Mrs. Smith is an 84 year old fragile female. She has suffered a fractured arm after she slipped and fell while getting out of the bathtub. She had x-rays taken immediately following her fall. After reviewing the x-rays the surgeon determined that due to her severity and location of the fracture, she would require to have an open reduction internal fixation. We know that she has suffered a fractured arm and we know that after reviewing her x-rays she would require an open reduction internal fixation.
Isabelle Carroll Hours 4 & 5 November 15th, 2016 Argument Essay Charlie Gordon's doctors did not act ethically as they performed the surgery on him to increase his intelligence. Ethics are what people consider to be morally right and wrong. The scientists decided that it would've been morally right to conduct their own experiment on Charlie Gordon. However, the scientists may have acted ethically by conducting the experiment to see if they can improve the intelligence of the entire society. It is unfortunate that the disadvantages outnumber the number of advantages because the ratio shows that the scientists should not perform the surgery, as there are more risks than benefits.
Ethics throughout science are very controversial as they are the model of distinguishing between right and wrong throughout all aspects of research. Throughout Honeybee Democracy and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks we are given an insider’s perspective to the ethics, or the lack there of, regarding the ongoing research and the researchers conducting it. Although the books cover very different subject matter, there are divisions of their research and within their individual ethics that are almost indistinguishable. One of the most highly debatable and common questions of ethics stems from the idea of whether it is acceptable to sacrifice lives for science.
In the Zimbardo prison experiment, participants are arbitrarily chosen to be either guards or prisoners. However, both the guards and the prisoners internalize their roles immediately. The study is terminated after 6 days because the guards began physically and emotionally abusing the prisoners. This experiment “reveals a message we do not want to accept: that most of us can undergo significant character transformations when we are caught up in the crucible of social forces” (Zimbardo, 2007, p.211). The Stanford Prison Experiment shows how latent violent and aggressive personalities are easily realized when one has dominance over submissive personalities.
Normal People Behaving Evil The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment to see if normal people would change their behavior in a role-play as a prisoner or a prison guard. The experiment was conducted by Dr.Philip Zimbardo in 1973 at Stanford University that caused numerous amount of trauma to prisoners by prison guards in their role-playing position which forced Dr. Zimbardo to officially terminate the experiment six days after it was introduced. Due to the cruel aggressive behaviors from the guards, the experiment led to a question, "Do "normal" people have the capability of behaving badly?" The answer to that question is that most likely an individual who behave normally will have the capability of expressing evil behavior due to the environment that they are surrounded.
On day six Zimbardo and Milgram decided to conclude the experiment. Zimbardo originally intended to explore how prisoners adapt to powerlessness, but he has contended that the experiment demonstrates how swiftly arbitrary assignment of power can lead to abuse. (Maher, The anatomy of obedience. P. 408) Once the experiment was completed Zimbardo and Milgram concluded that generally people will conform to the roles they are told to play.
While arguably one of the defining psychological studies of the 20th Century, the research was not without flaws. Almost immediately the study became a subject for debate amongst psychologists who argued that the research was both ethically flawed and its lack of diversity meant it could not be generalized. Ethically, a significant critique of the experiment is that the participants actually believed they were administering serious harm to a real person, completely unaware that the learner was in fact acting. Although Milgram argued that the illusion was a necessary part of the experiment to study the participants’ reaction, they were exposed to a highly stressful situation. Many were visibly distraught throughout the duration of the test
The Milgram experiment was conducted to analyze obedience to authority figures. The experiment was conducted on men from varying ages and varying levels of education. The participants were told that they would be teaching other participants to memorize a pair of words. They believed that this was an experiment that was being conducted to measure the effect that punishment has on learning, because of this they were told they had to electric shock the learner every time that they answered a question wrong. The experiment then sought out to measure with what willingness the participants obeyed the authority figure, even when they were instructed to commit actions which they seemed uncomfortable with.
