Chris Flipp Research Ethics

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.

The fact that so many of the former scientists were guilty of their experiments proves their unethical nature, and how horrible the experiments really

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.

“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.

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...

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

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.

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.

It is the responsibility of IRBs to consider the ethical circumstances of each proposed experiment. There are issues concerning abstract values which can be unique to individual IRBs. There is difficulty in establishing unity among IRBs for guidelines regarding which experiments are ethical and

Accordingly, the movie provides historical context into why research practices have changed since the 1930s and highlights why the healthcare system needed to establish ethical guidelines for all healthcare professionals and researchers to follow. By exploring these ethical issues, the movie offers a complex and engaging representation of the study that allows for critical thinking about the difficult subject matter it

“The Article Exploitation of prisoners in clinical research: perceptions of study participants” written by Paul Christopher states “Given the history of and continued potential for prisoner exploitation, biomedical research should be permitted only if there is a strongly favorable benefit-risk ratio for the prisoner.” Even though Henrietta Lacks was not in a clinical trial she did not receive all the information from her Doctors which led to her downfall. This lack of information not only hurt her but it also hurt her family. The worst part yet Henrietta and her family were not the only ones who were lied to because Chester Southam not only used prisoners for research but he used hospitalized people. He told the patients that he was checking their immune system when in fact he was injecting them with HeLa cells.

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

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

In my evidence one of the primary ethical justifications for conducting research with human subjects. Human experimentation can be needed to help everyone survive. Without human subjects or human experimentation the world wouldn't have things we need like medicine, cures for diseases, and more. While human experimentation can be bad or non-effective in helping people sometimes; but other times it can work