The Importance Of Informed Consent

The art of medicine and curing diseases was not always approached in a scientific way. In fact, many advances occurred between 1919 to 1939, after technological advances allowed scientists to apply the scientific method to medical research. At this time, the ethics of using patients as test subjects either for new medicines or as samples for further testing were not considered. An extreme example of this was the Nazi’s using concentration camp inmates – including children – to run painful and invasive experiments. More modern examples are not so easy to identify as unethical, however. While amputating a leg to develop methods to deal with fractures and war wounds is obviously unethical, harvesting cells to develop a vaccine is not so clear cut, as the disadvantage to the patient is hard to identify. Coming from the various Nazi testing and especially the Nuremberg testing and trials, another code of ethics was developed, called the Nuremberg Code.

Elements of the Nuremberg code of 1947 includes a 10-point statement of ethical principles created to prevent future abuse of human subjects. As during the time Japan and Nazi Germany subjected human beings to torturous experiments in order to obtain data that might prove useful in their war effort (Fischer, 2006). This document is the foundation for human rights when it comes to medical experimentation worldwide. The most important principle above all is to obtain an informed consent. An informed consent explains in depth all potential benefits and risks. The men who participated in the Tuskegee Study were not provided with an informed consent. A study had been done already on the Norwegian men, which made it clear

Informed consent is the basis for all legal and moral aspects of a patient’s autonomy. Implied consent is when you and your physician interact in which the consent is assumed, such as in a physical exam by your doctor. Written consent is a more extensive form in which it mostly applies when there is testing or experiments involved over a period of time. The long process is making sure the patient properly understands the risk and benefits that could possible happen during and after the treatment. As a physician, he must respect the patient’s autonomy. For a patient to be an autonomous agent, he must have legitimate moral values. The patient has all the rights to his medical health and conditions that arise. When considering informed

The concept of informed consent that we have today did not exist in the 1950s when Henrietta’s cells were obtained. Patients were regularly used in research without their knowledge. Nevertheless, some doctors had unethical standards. Dr. Chester Southam, a credible researcher of cancer, developed a theory that “the cancer was caused by either a virus or an immune system deficiency” (Skloot 128) and the bodies of patients’ who had suffered with cancer in the past would reject the HeLa cells. He tested the patients and “he said nothing about injecting them with someone else’s malignant cells” (Skloot 128). Southam believed that revealing details to patients would create a “phobia and ignorance” (Skloot 130) in their mind. He injected “more than six hundred people for his research, about half of them cancer patients” (Skloot 129), telling them “he was testing their immune systems” (Skloot 128). Southam expanded with his experiments on testing

Nuremberg Code of 1947 was written after the Second World War, in which German physicians who participated in the Nazi concentration camps were prostituted for unethical human experiment. ("Nuremberg Code", n.d.) The Nuremberg code of 1947 contain ten points about proper consent, how the study should positive impact on population, the need for pre-existing knowledge, the avoidance of any harm or suffering to the participants and concluding the study if injury or risk for death occurs, if the risk exceed benefits the study needs to stop, the freedom to leave the study at any time if the participants are unable of continuing, and lastly, the staff must stop the study if they believe conditions are dangerous. (Post, 2004) Although the Tuskegee study started before the Nuremburg code of ethics were established, the Tuskegee study continue until 1972 in which the researchers ignored the Nuremburg code and continue with their unethical study. The researchers failed to properly inform the participants of the study and to obtain proper consent. Furthermore, the researchers cause harm to the Tuskegee participants by not providing them the proper treatment for their illness and not allow the participants to leave the study when they weren’t able to continue. Thus, unethical behaviors continue even when guidelines were provided to the researchers and the researchers failed to

In the early 1900’s the field of medicine began to expand at a rapid pace and ever increasingly rigorous experimental methodologies were developed. These new methods created a greater demand for human experimentation (Deria, 2006). Many medical advancements occurred as a result of World War II and the medical research community continued an upward trend. The United States government also became involved and created the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide funds for experimentation (Deria, 2006). One of the funded studies became infamously known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

Every person or family member who has faced a medical crisis during his or her lifetime has at one point hoped for an immediate cure, a process that would deter any sort of painful or prolonged convalescence. Medical research always has paralleled a cure or treatment. From the beginning of the turn of the 20th century the most unspeakable appalling atrocities against human beings was The Tuskegee Syphilis Study. One of the most horrendous breaches of ethics in The United States history is Tuskegee’s studies and associated research.

The research agendas that occupied the American medical community during the twentieth century involved the controversy in making medicine a research science. Research-based medicine made enormous strides with discoveries such as penicillin and insulin, however led to issues with medical ethics. The following documents cite a highly controversial research project in the mid-20th century, the Tuskegee experiment that had a profound effect on protecting the rights of subjects in human experimentation. Michael Shimkin discusses in his paper, “A Leading Research Scientist Embraces the Nuremberg Code as a Guide to Ethical Practice in an Age of Human Experimentation, 1953,” the proper way of using people in medical experiments. Vanessa Gamble’s essay, “A Legacy of Distrust: African Americans and Medical Research,” looks at the relationship between race and American medicine to explain how the African American populace became the chose demographic for Tuskegee project. In Dr. Irvin Schatz’s letter to Dr. Donald Rockwell, Dr. Schatz questions the morals of physicians who worked on the Tuskegee Study

During World War II Nazi Doctors played a key role in the mass genocide of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and those who were mentally and physically handicapped. The primary motivations of the Nazi doctors were most likely provoked by fear and safety at the cost of the cleansing the Aryan race of those who were considered impure. Motivations including peer-pressure and self-preservation are very likely to have increased the ability for the Nazi doctors to ignore one of the most basic components of moral and ethical code (do not kill others), as well as being able to ignore the Hippocratic oath all doctors swear by, to experiment on the poor dying bodies of the victims of the Holocaust. In order to murder thousands of Jews, Gypsies, and those who

The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr.

As any other clinical research study different ethical issues could arise while conducting my practicum experience. Providing an effective informed consent process is an important ethical aspect that will be thoroughly managed during research design and while recruiting the 150 participants. Respect for potential and enrolled subjects is another topic that will be considered to avoid having ethical problems that will prevent for this to happen. The risk-benefit ratio will also be studied for this to be favorable for the participants.

The Hastings Center Report stated that after World War II there were at least 45 cases when research articles resorted to data, revealed due to Nazi experiments. (latimes, 1988) Public controversy was stimulated when the issues of potential scientific abuses and social responsibility were raised. A researcher on hypothermia Dr. Robert Pozos was to initiate the questions, related to utilization Nazi data, at the bioethical conference. Dr Pozos laments that despite attention which was undoubtedly drawn, no solution was found: "Ethicists never answer a question. They raise one question, which raises another question and another. I want guidelines. I want to know if

The Nuremberg Doctors Trial of 1946 is the preeminent case recognizing the importance of medical ethics and human rights specifically about human research subjects. The defendants in the trials include Nazi leadership, physicians, and investigators prosecuted for conducting unethical and inhumane medical experiments on civilians and prisoners of war resulting in extreme pain, suffering, permanent injury and often death. The Nuremberg Code, borne of these trials, establishes ethical guidelines for human experimentation to ensure the rights of subjects in medical research. Herein, this writer will first identify and discuss ethical dilemmas presented in the Nuremberg case followed by three

During World War Two, a handful of experiments were conducted on the prisoners of the concentration camps by German physicians. They were painful, and often deadly. Concentration camp prisoners were experimented on without their consent.

“Respect for human beings involves giving due scope to peoples capacity to make their own decisions. In the research context, this normally requires that participation be the result of a choice made by the participants” (NHMR, 2007, p.3).  Freegard 2012 (p.60), states that “respecting the rights of others,” includes a responsibility for Health professionals “to let others know about their rights” and that this forms the basis of an informed consent.