...The Willowbrook experiment was an opportunistic experiment in which mentally ill children were the victims of and parents were deceived into giving their consent through unethical means such as blackmail. Children were living in a school that was overcrowded and hepatitis was rampant. Instead of the school raising their sanitation standards they took advantage of this and began experimenting with the virus and injecting it into the children. These children had no idea what they were having done to them and no way to understand given their mental state. Some parents were told they would only accept their child if they placed them in the hepatitis wing and gave consent to be involved in the experiment. When parents would tour the facility and a consent form was given to them, the manner at which the school explained the virus sounds like nothing more than a stomach bug that may last for a week at best. Willowbrook made it sound like it was in the best interest of the parents and child if they gave their consent to participate because if they caught hepatitis from another child then the symptoms would be far worse than if they were given a milder dose from the school. There are many ways someone may look at this and ask their self was it justified as we will see. "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." This quote is a summary of what Utilitarianism defines. A utilitarian believes that...
Words: 1135 - Pages: 5
...1) What do the Willowbrook, Tuskege Syphilis, and Cincinnati radiation experiments have in common? The Willowbrook, Tuskege Syphilis, and Cincinnati radiation experiments had one common purpose: to see the effects of something by using people of less worth, in order to benefit those who are worth in society. In revelation of these news, new standards were needed to avoid tragic events like the ones discovered in these locations. Moreover, as mentioned by Ekland-Olsen and Beicken, The patients receiving radiation all had cancer. They were poor, with little education, unable to pay for private physicians. Just over 60 percent were of African American heritage. There was little or no hope that the full-body radiation treatment would help them personally, but researchers believed…they would learn something valuable…in the event of an atomic attack.” 2) What other crystallizing events can you think of that have clarified thinking and motivated action? Other crystallizing events that I can think of that have clarified thinking and motivated action were the similarities between the experiments conducted in the U.S. with those conducted by German doctors during WWII, the use of aborted fetuses in federally funded...
Words: 889 - Pages: 4
...included Jews, Blacks, women, poor people basically anyone that was inferior and serve no purpose in their eyes. (C) No. 4. No. 5. It was practiced in Germany by Hitler. People were taken from old age homes, mental institutions were they were sterilized, euthanatized, and eliminated. 6. Yes eugenics it continues to be practiced in subtle ways. I believe it is more so targeted towards African Americans. However, potential ways are seen in abortions and birth control, also it is seen in the foods we eat like pesticides, steroids, and preservatives. Willowbrook State School 1. It was overpopulated and the conditions were inhumane, deplorable, and unsanitary. 2. Hepatitis study where children were exposed to the hepatitis virus by injection or by consuming hepatitis infected fecal matter. 3. Being that Robert Kennedy was a public figure and respected man of the community, he drew attention to the inhumane conditions at Willowbrook which lead to the development of a 5 year plan to correct the issues afflicting the facility. 4. It took Senator Robert Kennedy to effect a difference because people tend to obey and respect choices of authority figures. Yes, it relates because people seem to obey and/or follow orders given to them by a person of power. The Karen Quinlan 1. Karen Quinlan was a healthy 21-year old that lapsed into a coma after drinking and taking valium. She never regained consciousness and...
Words: 1207 - Pages: 5
...Ethically obtained data are the research findings that are brought about in an ethically sound way. This data adheres to all aspects of the codes of ethics. (Oliver, P., 2010) However, when this is breached the data becomes unethical. It can be debated that unethical data obtained over the years can help benefit the greater good of society, but the cost of utilizing this data can also be argued. I will identify both the affirmative and opposing teams arguments, and briefly drawn upon points raised in the debate. I will also identify the strengths and weaknesses within our teamwork. I was the first speaker for my team, the opposing side. We argued that for the greater good of society, data obtained unethically should not be used today. We discussed the breach of ethical standards, outlining the long list of ways in which ethical guidelines were not taken into consideration. Victoria, our second speaker, drew upon the ethical principles instilled by the Declaration of Helsinki, allowing the audience to gain understanding in the areas that were breached. We also compared the legality of conducting and publishing unethical data, drawing on examples of where the law has been broken. I used rhetorical questions to the audience to gain an understanding of what these individuals were subject to, to try strengthening our points. The affirmative team argued that to benefit society, we must use information drawn from studies conducted unethically. They highlighted many examples of...
Words: 793 - Pages: 4
...In order for science to continually advance, scientists performed experiments. The field of medicine is doing the same thing. Human experimentation has been done not only in the past, but also in the present. Examples are those human experimentation done by the Nazis to the Jewish people during the Holocaust, the Tuskegee syphilis study done by the Americans before World War 2, and the Willowbrook hepatitis study done by the doctors to the mentally disabled children. These experiments are done supposedly to find answers on how the human body responds to certain conditions or illnesses. Although the researchers claimed that it was for the sake of science, people rejected them because it was unethical, sadistic, and worst – monstrous. Human experimentation since then has take on different forms nowadays. The question remains, are we for or against it?...
Words: 592 - Pages: 3
...information and the time to make a rational and voluntary decision to participate in a study. At times this process is not feasible do to emergency situations, such as when a patient arrives in the emergency room in a compromised mental and physical state that does not permit ample time for this process. Such cases may also be further aggravated when a family member or a Legal Authorized Representative (LAR) is not available to decide if the patient should participate in a clinical trial that offers a treatment may increase the of survival more than the current standard of treatment. We must than think of the patient’s best interest at this point. History of Informed Consent Following World War II, the Nazis who performed medical experiments on prisoners of war without obtaining their consent were convicted of murder, but not for their actions of conducting unethical research. Their actions helped bring to life the Nuremberg Code of 1948; the first legal document to enforce the idea that subjects’ participation in clinical research must be voluntary. Many of the elements that help make up the Nuremberg Code are included in the code of federal regulations (CFR) parts 50 and 312 and the International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) E6 good clinical practice guidelines2. Some key guidelines included are 1) Subjects should be of sound mind and able to understand the procedures and risks of a study and make a decision to participate...
Words: 2056 - Pages: 9
...com/article/2012/5/21/harvard-lsd-project-leary/ ). Human experimentation's dark history began when the line between treatment and experimentation was blurred. In the early 1960s, the public began to notice the ethical neglect for test subjects by their experimenters. Those charged with administering research funding, took not of the public furor generated by the exposure of gross abuses in medical research; doctors and scientist alike began to use the data and notes gather from the Nazi experiments before and after World War II, in order to conduct these unethical experiments. People who unknowingly and willingly volunteered to participate in these experiments, were placed into unkempt conditions and unsanitary environments. The promotional and uncontrolled distribution of thalidomide throughout America, labeled as an experimental drug; the administration of cancer cells to senile and debilitated patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital (Katz, 1972). As a result, the public was very sensitive to these experiments since the US government had imprinted the crimes committed by the Nazi doctors throughout the war into their minds. When the public became aware that their own government was capable of the same devious unethical experimentation, two fears arose; the frightening power of some political ideologies to demand that no private interest impede the accomplishment of the public good, and the acute fear...
Words: 1374 - Pages: 6
...Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Rohan Lalani Sociology 1301-304 San Jacinto College Professor Ann Reynoso Semester- Fall 2017 10/5/2017 This research article is about the experiment initiated by the U.S public health services in 1932 in Macon county, Alabama. The experiment was to determine the natural course of untreated, latent syphilis in black males. The test included 400 syphilitic men, and in addition 200 uninfected men who filled in as controls. The main distributed report of the investigation showed up in 1936 with resulting papers issued each four to six years, through the 1960s. At the point when penicillin turned out to be generally accessible by the mid-1950s as the favored treatment for syphilis,...
Words: 817 - Pages: 4
...information and the time to make a rational and voluntary decision to participate in a study. At times this process is not feasible do to emergency situations, such as when a patient arrives in the emergency room in a compromised mental and physical state that does not permit ample time for this process. Such cases may also be further aggravated when a family member or a Legal Authorized Representative (LAR) is not available to decide if the patient should participate in a clinical trial that offers a treatment may increase the of survival more than the current standard of treatment. We must than think of the patient’s best interest at this point. History of Informed Consent Following World War II, the Nazis who performed medical experiments on prisoners of war without obtaining their consent were convicted of murder, but not for their actions of conducting unethical research. Their actions helped bring to life the Nuremberg Code of 1948; the first legal document to enforce the idea that subjects’ participation in clinical research must be voluntary. Many of the elements that help make up the Nuremberg Code are included in the code of federal regulations (CFR) parts 50 and 312 and the International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) E6 good clinical practice guidelines2. Some key guidelines included are 1) Subjects should be of sound mind and able to understand the procedures and risks of a study and make a decision to participate...
Words: 2076 - Pages: 9
...question as well. Introduction In January 2012, the news feeds of approximately 700,000 users of the popular social media site, Facebook, were manipulated in a manner so that some of its users only had positive news stories show up on their pages and others had only negative news stories show up. The experiment was conducted over the span of a week, from the 11th to the 18th, without the knowledge of the users (Kramer, 2014). According to the researchers, the goal was to see if “emotional contagion” occurs without direct interaction between people and in the absence of nonverbal cues. By manipulating the news stories, either all positive or all negative, they could study what effects, if any, there was on the moods of the users (LaChance, 2014). This is only one of many social experiments that the Facebook Core Data Science Team, has performed since 2008 when the team was established. All of which were performed without the knowledge of the website users (Dewey, 2014). History Performing social experiments and studying the psychology behind human behaviors is not new nor is the concept of studying human behavior itself unethical. What is unethical though, is experiments being performed on unaware, ill informed, and possibly...
Words: 3902 - Pages: 16
...Psychology Not to be confused with Phycology, Physiology, or 1 Etymology Psychiatry. Further information: Outline of psychology and Index The word psychology literally means, “study of the soul" of psychology articles (ψυχή psukhē, “breath, spirit, soul” and -λογία -logia, “study of” or “research”).[10] The Latin word psycholoPsychology is an academic and applied discipline that gia was first used by the Croatian humanist and Latinist involves the scientific study of mental functions and Marko Marulić in his book, Psichiologia de ratione anbehaviors.[1][2] Psychology has the immediate goal of imae humanae in the late 15th century or early 16th understanding individuals and groups by both establish- century.[11] The earliest known reference to the word ing general principles and researching specific cases,[3][4] psychology in English was by Steven Blankaart in 1694 and by many accounts it ultimately aims to benefit in The Physical Dictionary which refers to “Anatomy, society.[5][6] In this field, a professional practitioner or which treats the Body, and Psychology, which treats of researcher is called a psychologist and can be classified the Soul.”[12] as a social, behavioral, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors. 2 History Psychologists explore concepts such as perception...
Words: 12427 - Pages: 50
...Chapter 1: Ethical Theory Meta-ethical positions include: * Ethical non-cognitivism (concept that ethics is a matter of feelings) * Ethical relativism (concept that ethics is relative to a particular point of view) * Ethical objectivism (notion that ethics is objective in nature). Meta-Ethical Positions Ethical Non-cognitivism The basis of ethical non-cognitivism is that ethical disagreement can be a highly emotional affair where no amount of reasoning is likely to convince the other party. * Example: “Let’s just agree to disagree” Ethical Relativism * Ethical relativism says that while ethical statements are cognitively meaningful, they do not hold in any objective sense because they depend on our point of view. * If we accept ethical relativism, then ethical disagreement among people who do not share the same perspective becomes impossible. * It assumes that if people agree on something, then it must be true. * Ethical relativism is suspect for a pragmatic reason: it is fundamentally at variance with our social practice. * Example: “To each his own”, or the belief that what’s right for one group isn’t necessarily right for another Ethical Objectivism * Ethical objectivism holds that right and wrong are objective phenomena. * Example: “I’m right and you’re wrong” What is Ethics? * As a discipline, ethics is a branch of philosophy. * It deals with questions of right and wrong conduct, and with what we ought to do and what...
Words: 23725 - Pages: 95
...Shaping Parental Authority over Children’s Bodies ALICIA OUELLETTE* INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................... 956 I. SCULPTING, SHAPING, AND SIZING CHILDREN: FOCUS CASES.............................. 959 A. WESTERNIZING ASIAN EYES..................................................................... 960 B. HORMONES FOR STATURE ........................................................................ 961 C. LIPOSUCTION ON A TWELVE YEAR OLD.................................................... 963 D. GROWTH STUNTING ................................................................................. 964 II. THE LAW, MEDICINE, PARENTAL RIGHTS, AND CHILDREN’S BODIES ................. 966 A. BACKGROUND LAW ................................................................................. 966 B. APPLICATION IN SHAPING CASES .............................................................. 969 C. ROOM FOR REGULATION .......................................................................... 971 III. WHAT IS REALLY WRONG WITH MEDICAL AND SURGICAL SHAPING OF CHILDREN? ............................................................................................................ 973 A. THE NONSUBORDINATION PRINCIPLE AS A LIMIT ON INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS 974 B. CHILDREN AS PERSONS, PARENTAL RIGHTS ............................................. 977 C. MEDICAL AND SURGICAL SHAPING OF CHILDREN IS DIFFERENT ............... 981 IV. CONCERNING...
Words: 28185 - Pages: 113
