Case Study: The Guatemala Syphilis Experiment

When conducting research on another human being, rules must be put in place to protect the dignity and health of that person. That being said, if the person is under no physical or emotional distress, there should not be a need to stop a researcher from continuing or sharing their findings. A reasonable stance in this case would mean do not harm, if that was not explicitly obvious to begin with if you are a decent human being. A person may be your test subject, but that does not mean you can stop treating them as a fellow person and see them as another experiment.

The Institutional Review Board(IRB) and the Canadian Research Ethics Board(REB) set certain rules that are to be followed to protect the wellbeing of a person who may be a test subject for a research project. The rules are in place to make sure history is not repeated and research subjects are not taken advantage of by unethical researchers. There are rules that I do agree with, and there are those I do not believe should be so harshly enforced when there is no evidence of physical or emotional abuse to the test subject. Of course the person must be respected and unharmed, and if those basic principles are compromised, the IRB should interfere and punish the researchers and those involved appropriately. However, if the test subject is neither harmed or …show more content…
The purpose was to give those infected treatments of penicillin to determine the effects in prevention and treatment of STDs. In this case, the IRB is right to enforce rules that someone should give informed consent and be put aware of what experiment they are participating in and what exactly will be the process of the part of the experiment they will be involved