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Conflict Between Research And Ethics

Some of the greatest medical breakthroughs have been achieved during the last hundred years. With the advancement in technology doctors have been able to create vaccines, and medicines that have been able to cure or eliminate diseases that were once known as “deadly” such as polio and small pox. Though these advancements were needed to save, cure and protect the health of millions of people, the process in which these medical advancements were achieved took many years of research and often involved many unethical practices. This paper will analyze past ethical issues relating to biomedical research. The author will discuss the development of the patient informed consent, the importance of an institutional review board (IRB) and or independent ethics committees (IEC) in research and finally explore the benefits and issues of biomedical research in relation to patients, society and medical professionals.
Ethics and History
As history has shown, “many of the early advances in medicine were made at the expense of many marginal groups such as asylum inmates and prisoners” (Kiefer, 2002). These test subjects were not informed on the reasoning, the process, indications and or side effects of the research trials. The atrocities that occurred in WWII and the unethical clinical trials done by the U.S. health service awakened the public and the medical community to the awareness and need of establishing regulations to protect the welfare of individuals.
Some of the horrific research experiments that were done on human subjects were conducted during WWII. German doctors began using prisoners in Nazi concentration camps for medical experimentation. Experiments such as shooting prisoners to determine clotting times, and submerging prisoners in ice baths to determine how long a person could remain alive in such conditions are just a few of the crimes that were created in the name of research. These human subjects were used involuntarily against their will and due to the...