AIDS and Healthcare Workers Essay

The CDC reported during a twenty-year window (1980-2000) that over 775,000 people had been reported AIDS in the United States and over 448,000 of these had died. (HIV, (n.d.)) These staggering numbers generated a number of scientists to experiment for a cure. These studies should be considered unethical if the subject was so ill that they could not give consent. In some of the studies, doctors did not explain the harsh side effects. The test subjects were found to have debilitating side effects that were far worse than the disease itself.

HIV is a heavy topic, due to the fact, a vast number of Americans are affected with this disease. However, when we are faced with a situation that includes HIV that could possibly have a devastating impact on a relative life what do we do? This question is answered by a statement that you quoted in your discussion, “In the vast majority of circumstances, a patient’s HIV status should not be revealed to anyone else without the patient’s explicit informed consent, for both legal and ethical reasons” (Symington, 2013). It is not our duty as healthcare professions to inform the public of any patient’s health conditions. It is the patient’s right to trust that the healthcare system will keep all their information private. “It is concluded that

Ethics, in our society, are the moral principles that govern our behavior, dictating what is right from wrong. The specifics of ethics changes as values in our society change and evolve. This occurs in Rebecca Skloots book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. One major reoccurring theme in the book is the lack of informed consent and autonomy. Fortunately, now there are safeguards which protect human rights in regard to health care and research. The Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, now part of the Department of Health and Human Services, created The Belmont Report, which is one such safeguard establishing principles for all human research (USDHHS, 1979). This paper will discuss the ethical issue of informed consent within The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the disregard to parts of the Belmont Report, as well as compare the role of the nurse in charge of Henrietta’s care versus the standards of care set for modern nurses.

De Bord, J. (2014). ETHICS IN MEDICINE University of Washington School of Medicine. Retrieved from https://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/topics/consent.html

The subjects in this experiment were in fact affected in great deals. They suffered throughout most of their life, from the point of infection all the way until death. While there were medicines available that had the ability to cure those who were sick, the subjects were so illiterate and undereducated that they had no way of knowing about what was going on. The doctors abused all of the patients and crossed several boundaries between personal rights and hospital rights. They lied to the black men, assuring them that they were curing the syphilis. However, not once throughout the entire experiment, did the doctors reveal the truth. Lies were weaved in and out as days, months, and the years of the study went by. Skloot explains in her article, “Taking the Least of You,” that during a court case in 1984 involving patient rights and patient property, the judges ruled, “‘A patient must have the ultimate control of what becomes of his or her tissues. To hold otherwise would open the door to a massive invasion of human privacy and dignity in the name of medical progress’” (Skloot 4). Not only did the doctors of the study abuse the men’s personal rights during the experiment, they also affected them long-term, after the first six months of the study. Brandt explains in his article that, “During the forty years of the experiment, the USPHS had

According to a report published in the February 1998 edition of “Nature”, scientists identified what they believe is the earliest case of AIDs in a man from the Congo in 1959. (Lerner and Hombs 39) By the end of the year 1980, 80 men would have been diagnosed with at least of the opportunistic infections that are a characteristic of AIDs. (Lerner and Hombs 40) AIDs cases in the 1980s increased dramatically not only around the world but in the United States, primarily in larger cities like Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco. The numbers of AIDs diagnoses and deaths spiraled out of control throughout the 1980s and towards the end of 1989 there were 117,500 cases of AIDS reported and 89,000 related deaths.(Lerner and Hombs 54) In the

Nonmaleficence is defined as “to act in such a manner as to avoid causing harm to another, including deliberate harm, risk of harm, and harm that occurs during the performance of beneficial acts (Burkhardt, 2014, p. 529). The Hippocratic Oath, is not to be taken lightly and holds medical personal accountable to “do no harm” (Burkhardt, 2014, p. 10). These researchers were breaking their oath to the medical community by lying to the participants. By not actually treating any of these men for syphilis, the researchers were putting the participant’s lives at risk. “Without treatment, syphilis can severely damage your heart, brain or other organs, and can be life-threatening” (Mayo Clinic, 2016). By knowingly and willingly keeping vital information as well as treatment from the men, the researchers were committing serious crimes of unethical

Chapter 4 of the Nagami book dealt with AIDS and how it became a common infection in the population. In the book Dr. Nagami explained how mysterious the origin of the disease was in the beginning of the outbreak. There were various explanation for the origins. It was believed that amyl nitrate “poppers” could be a cause for the disease since homosexual men were known to use them before sex. It appeared predominately in the gay population at the time. Eventually it appeared in the intravenous drug using population, Haitians, people who underwent transfusions and eventually the heterosexual population. This unknown source of the disease was what caused fear in the early stages of the disease. Dr. Nagami explained how this caused fear even in the medical profession as some doctors moved away from treating HIV patients. Dr. Nagami herself changed her behavior being reluctant to shake hands with AIDS patients.

The early days of the AIDS epidemic challenged the cartesian nature of biomedical culture. With its emphasis on empiricism, the superior biomedical mind could normally make sense of the inferior patient’s bodily concerns. In the early 80s, though, the scientific method seemed to be failing with AIDS, with no clear biological etiologic agent being identified, and rumors circulated. As the biomedical mind struggled to define and categorize AIDS, the moralistic nature of medical authority revealed itself. Instead of pathology residing in the biology of a patient, it appeared to transcend the patient’s biology and reveal deviant sexual behavior. Instead of being able to treat or study the disease, the diseased bodies were quarantined. Even when it was understood that AIDS had a viral cause, biomedicine’s quarantining practices became subtler, but still perpetuated the social stigma of AIDS patients. In this essay, I examine the nature of AIDS stigma through the lens of two biomedical professionals’ memories of the first decade of the epidemic. One such professional is Dr. M. Robert Hill, M.D. He is a retired internist of 68 years, who used to work at Missouri Baptist Medical Center in Town and Country, Missouri, and treated several AIDS patients before antiretroviral therapy was discovered. The other ethnographic source is Dr. Daniel Hanson, a current Immunology lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis, who was completing his second postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at

AIDS was a widespread epidemic that ran rampant in America during the 1980’s. Without any prior knowledge of the condition, how it was spread, and certainly no

Many people have in their minds that anyone who has HIV should not be in contact with them, believing that they can also be contagious. Back in 1986, people really didn’t have the right information of HIV. Even this year of 2016, people are beginning to learn that HIV is not really dangerous if we learn how treat it and be safe around a person who is HIV positive. Before being a CNA, Dentist, medical assistant, and even a physician, they should have learned how to prevent HIV when treating a patient with HIV. They are even drugs that will prevent thee someone who comes in repeated and has direct contact with the virus. . The main function of a physician is to heal the sick, relieve pain, and ease inevitable death. Any physician refusing to treat an HIV+ person should not be implicitly trusted to know the latest facts on any condition since the physician clearly is well behind the times on HIV/AIDS, a very public condition, news of which, for historical reasons, reaches even beyond the medical community and into the general public. Someone acquire to HIV +, it’s not the end of the world. The question assumes the position that becoming HIV+ is so horrifying that even physicians that sworn to heal the sick, should be willing to

In June of 1981 the CDC reported an occurrence of PCP which is known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in homosexual males in California (The AIDS Epidemic 1981-1987, 1981). Back in the 80s there was very little known detail in about AIDS. There was controversy in the movie of who should get credit for the finding of AIDS either Dr. Robert Gallo or Dr. Gottlieb. This was an ethical implication that was ongoing throughout the movie. Don Francis who was part of the CDC wanted to help find what exactly this unknown contagion was that was killing so many others. Another ethical implication was when the gay society was treated as if they were the cause of the AIDS epidemic. AIDS did occur in most the gay society but when women and children started contracting the disease the CDC linked it back to the blood banks. The blood bank executive fried back and

Although these measures may not be as important as medical visits frequency and viral load suppression, these factors are a contributing aspect to the health and improvement of people living with HIV. Poor oral health can lead to malnutrition. If the person is unable to chew or swallow because of pain from their mouth or a laceration, the person may not receive enough food to stay healthy. Consequently, this may result in how their body responds to HIV medication or pathogens. In turn, any infection can stimulate the virus to grow, causing a loss of viral loads. Furthermore, hepatitis C is the most common infection associated with HIV, but is neglected by more than half of the grantees. If grantees could just conduct the screening and letting the patient decide if he or she wants treatment, it would be beneficial rather than not screening any at

In 2004, there was a cluster of HIV infections in the Californian adult film industry. Although adult film workers are supposed to voluntarily get tested monthly for HIV and other STIs, there is still a window of time where the HIV virus is not detectable by test. It was during this window that a man infected 3 female adult film workers with HIV. He had his monthly test on February 12, 2004 and on March 17th, 2004 and was negative both times, yet he tested positive on April 20th 2004. The adult film actor experienced a flu-like illness while filming in Brazil, but it resolved after he flew back. While he was back in the US, he had unprotected sex with 13 women, and 3 of them later tested positive for HIV after testing negative the previous month. Thankfully,

The human immunodeficiency virus infecting humans originated as a natural infection from chimpanzees. HIV sporadically infected rural people that lived in isolated areas amongst the Congo. David M. Hills (2000) states in “Origins of HIV” that the virus had deadly outcomes. It quickly adapted to human beings. This became a human disease transmitted through blood and sexual contact. Tracing HIV to its roots, physicians recognized this virus as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) and Kaposi’s sarcoma found in young homosexual men (Peeters et al., 2013). These observations are the beginning of an alertness of the HIV epidemic in the United States.