What stuck me most about the “Natural Laboratories” article was that so many of the experiments conducted among native population were performed on children. In my opinion, unethical experimentation on children is among the worst offenses committed by American science. By their nature, children cannot fully understand the potential consequences of a trial, and therefore can never be provided enough information to make an education decision to participate—the most basic premise of ethical research. Neither can children refuse or discontinue “treatment”—another basic right of ethical medicine— because they lack voice. Given that children are inherently unable to provide informed consent, regardless of any expressed approval, the parents of potential subjects must decide whether the consequences of experimentation outweigh the benefits; they must stand in for their children, consenting only to procedures they deem beneficial.
In “Natural Laboratories,” every experiment involving children was unethical on at least two accounts. First the personnel never bothered to explain even the vaguest details of their study to the children, never mentioned whether pain would be involved, never asked their opinions. The parents were placed in no better position to provide informed consent on behalf of their children. In the best case scenarios, the parents were misinformed, bribed, or threatened signing consent forms. In the worst cases, such as in the late 1960s and early 1970s trachoma experiments, parents were not even asked for consent. The research company’s justification for this outrageous flouting of human rights was pathetic; the Proctor Foundation claimed that native students at boarding schools were under the jurisdiction of “Indian Health Services” which acted on their behalf in any legal matters. Sadly, we learn of most unethical science experiments years or decades after they occur. This begs the question: even in our “enlightened” age, where the IRB supposedly screens for immoral science, how many unscrupulous child experiments studies are we averting our eyes from?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
For the past couple weeks, we have been reading articles about medical experimentations done on groups of people with lesser power, whether it might be children or minority women. In the case of the vaccination experiments done on children, as Anya points out, both the children and their parents were completely uninformed or at best only partially informed about the procedure. As Anya mentioned, it horrifies me to think that these experiments were done on children who really don't have power to refuse or understand the consequence.
It makes me wonder whether these researchers would have done the same thing if these children were from average White American household, or perhaps their own. I think probably not. What causes people to treat different racial group differently? What makes them think that you can do risky procedures to minority children, women and men? Injustice such as these experimental procedure does not happen only in places where there are many different racial or ethnic groups present. It happens even in countries where everyone is of same race. Certain racial, social, economical or educational status give people delusion that they are better than the group with lesser status. And somehow, that delusion seem to give certain people rights to do unethical things to the people with lesser status. Is it possible that these problems can be addressed and regulated by law? Affirmative action and IRB are couple of examples which tries to promote justice and human rights for minority groups. However, as we discussed in class, and as Anya pointed out, there still might be unethical experimental studies being done. Unless we change our fundamental view on human dignity and equality, there is only so much that forceful law can do to make changes.
I completely agree with your concern. This element of child abuse also struck me as particularly disturbing. In addition to this horror, the child experimentation reveals a deeper vein of injustice and silence. Think of a child from an affluent community was taken without the parents permission and subjected to such harmful procedures: the outrage would be incredible.
Now consider what happened to the Indians. Not only was such a thing able to happen, there were no reprecussions for the atrocities. In fact, this episode was silenced for decades. Similarily, the Black community of the Tuskegee experimenations were abused and silenced. There should be no discrepancies between the outrage of a White parent or the outrage of an Indian or Black parent. Each should be just as noted in society as the other. Clearly, because this discrepancy exists, exerimentors choose the minorities as targets for their trials.
Post a Comment