Immortality is a concept that invokes thoughts of gods or energy, but can this concept apply to humans as well? In 1986 Freddie Mercury’s song, “Who wants to live forever,” has an underlying theme of one living forever against their will. 35 years before this song, cells taken from Henrietta Lacks became immortal and left her family to face a similar unimaginable quandary. The ethical research issues that have derived from the procurement and cultivation of her cells, and her family’s current plight, are numerous and highly debated. However, the aim of this paper is to merely reflect, focus, and discuss one of those ethical issues, as well as how we stop it from happening today. That is, the ethical treatment of people during research.
…show more content…
Prisoners who commit crimes have a stigma as being unable to integrate with society both before and after incarceration. Some would offer that the only remaining benefits these people serve are use in human medical trials. Allowing us to use this cohort as nothing more than a lab rat is just a contemporary perpetuation of the sins of our past. The simplest answer to prophylactically circumvent this would simply be to outlaw research on this populace. The problem with this is when would then remove one of the freedoms these individuals are still entitled to. Therefore the problem becomes how to be prevent coercion of this group. Currently the National Commission for the Protections for Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research has provided safeguards for this population be limiting research to that either one, seeks to understand the effects of incarceration on this populous, or two, any study that produces no more than “minimal risk” (Stone, 2004). While this is a progressive step toward the elimination of unethical research on humans, we must go a step further as there is no definition of what constitutes minimal risk. Furthermore, when defining legal minimum risk all legal, social, physical, psychological, emotion, and financial aspect musts be taken into consideration. Specifically, for a …show more content…
According to Van Der Graaf and Van Delden (2012), people should not be used as a simply a means of conducting research that would benefit others, but this principle is violated in the fact that “clinical research is often beneficial to future people rather than to participants” (p.76). The issue here is that the most credible research involves a two groups of participants, one that receives an intervention and another that does not. With the basic human instinct of self-preservation, one can conclude people with chronic, debilitating, or terminal illnesses often join research in a hopes for a treatment that will benefit them. While it is mandated that participants be informed of the parameters of the experiment, are we being fair to those that act only as a control? Is that false hope ethical? With no legal obligation to inform individuals which medication they received after the trial is complete, is this any different that offering burial insurance during the Tuskegee experiment? In order to continue to progress ethically not only should these people be informed which drug they were given, they should also be allowed to participate in another study that gives them a chance to receive the trail
Prisoners who commit crimes have a stigma as being unable to integrate with society both before and after incarceration. Some would offer that the only remaining benefits these people serve are use in human medical trials. Allowing us to use this cohort as nothing more than a lab rat is just a contemporary perpetuation of the sins of our past. The simplest answer to prophylactically circumvent this would simply be to outlaw research on this populace. The problem with this is when would then remove one of the freedoms these individuals are still entitled to. Therefore the problem becomes how to be prevent coercion of this group. Currently the National Commission for the Protections for Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research has provided safeguards for this population be limiting research to that either one, seeks to understand the effects of incarceration on this populous, or two, any study that produces no more than “minimal risk” (Stone, 2004). While this is a progressive step toward the elimination of unethical research on humans, we must go a step further as there is no definition of what constitutes minimal risk. Furthermore, when defining legal minimum risk all legal, social, physical, psychological, emotion, and financial aspect musts be taken into consideration. Specifically, for a …show more content…
According to Van Der Graaf and Van Delden (2012), people should not be used as a simply a means of conducting research that would benefit others, but this principle is violated in the fact that “clinical research is often beneficial to future people rather than to participants” (p.76). The issue here is that the most credible research involves a two groups of participants, one that receives an intervention and another that does not. With the basic human instinct of self-preservation, one can conclude people with chronic, debilitating, or terminal illnesses often join research in a hopes for a treatment that will benefit them. While it is mandated that participants be informed of the parameters of the experiment, are we being fair to those that act only as a control? Is that false hope ethical? With no legal obligation to inform individuals which medication they received after the trial is complete, is this any different that offering burial insurance during the Tuskegee experiment? In order to continue to progress ethically not only should these people be informed which drug they were given, they should also be allowed to participate in another study that gives them a chance to receive the trail