Ethical Research In Germany

Clearly, these researchers had their own agenda to acquire a medical breakthrough that would change the history of science and contribute to the greater good of society. However, their authority was used in an unwarranted manner to accomplish their goals, regardless of their respectable intentions in wanting to make medical progress. In reviewing these researchers and medical practitioners’ actions during the 1950’s which entails series of unethical behaviors and violation of human right, it develops an essential need to establish guidelines in the attempt to protect patient’s rights and privacy. Furthermore, due to the alternatives that arise throughout this case, there are many possible outcomes to be considered that could have a significant impact on stakeholders if these courses of action are fallowed. These solutions consequences may involve the tentative research, an advance way of life for the Lack’s family, political turmoil, economic health impact and a society whose cells may have similar experience.

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.

Through the ages, men have been able to find cures for catastrophic diseases through scientific research. Thanks to these advances, men have been able to prolong the life span of people, or provide better quality of life in cases in which a cure of various maladies has not been possible. To achieve such progresses, scientists have made use of prior knowledge, new theories, and technology obtaining numerous prodigious outcomes. Unfortunately, there have been many who have used questionable means for such ends. The German Max Clara is another case of a man with power and knowledge of science, who has misusing them. This paper aims to briefly identify principles and standards that would have been violated these days according to the existing APA Code of Ethics. Finally, ethical implications of making a moral judgment on past actions by researchers regarding human experimentation are discussed.

A 35-year-old man named Paul, who has a supportive wife and two adventurous kids, has been diagnosed with a very severe case of bone cancer for 1 year now. Since this type of cancer is so severe, chemotherapy is starting to not work as well. Paul’s oncologist unfortunately had to suggest a final option for Paul to try which was a clinical research trial. Clinical research trials are experimental studies that deem whether or not a medical drug, treatment, surgery, or device is safe and beneficial for humans to use ("National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute"). As explained in Marcia Angell’s Article, “The Ethics of Clinical Research in the Third World”, the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Health Organization (WHO) provides a guideline

In discussing the difficult subject of biomedical ethics, there are different scenarios that play out differently because of people’s views about morality. Consider the scenario of an eighty year-old man whom we will call Mr. Simpson. Years of getting the flu with complications has left Mr. Simpson’s lungs very weak and unable to take another year of the flu. In fact another year of the flu will likely kill him. He does not want the flu shot because he sincerely believes that the actual flu shot will give him the flu. With further research, the doctor and the family find that Mr. Simpson will accept an immune boosting shot only. If the physician lies to Mr. Simpson about the injection then he will

Additionally human medical research studies often targeted those who came to public teaching institutions desperately seeking free medical treatment and who generally looked up to doctors and experimenters as experts in the field who were there to help them. While this motivation may seem logical, it is often faulty as many human medical research studies throughout history demonstrate that the motivation of medical researches is often not the care of those currently suffering from a particular condition but the future returns on the cures or medical treatments that may be discovered during the study (McKie). As with many such unethical studies, the participants often do not give consent and are not informed of known dangers to the procedure, medications or lack of treatment. The use of individuals who are poor, uneducated, and lack medical insurance in combination with prestigious university research institutions and the white coated, well-educated researchers motivated by discoveries of cures on the scientific frontier results in abuses of individuals.

At extermination camps, the Nazis conducted many medical experiments on the prisoners that resulted in many deaths. Between 1939 and 1945 medical research projects involving cruel and often lethal experimentation on human subjects were performed. These projects were supported, well-known organizations in the Third Reich and were categorized into three fields: research intended at cultivating the endurance and rescue of German troops, testing of medical techniques and medications, and experiments that pursued to approve Nazi cultural belief. More than seven thousand victims of these cruel medical experiments have been acknowledged. Targets of the experiments included Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, and Catholic priests (Medical Experiments ).

The Holocaust in World War II is one the many cases of genocide. Millions of people were killed, or injured during the war. People were held in places called concentration camps. In the camps, people were dehumanized. They were treated like animals, and hurt. Sometimes they were even put through unethical treatments and medical experiments. Medical experiments are often talked about during times of war, as most of the time they are unethical, and a crime against humanity, as in the case of the experiments during the Holocaust. The medical experiments, and the trials that followed were the first trials for the crimes against humanity. The medical experiments of the Holocaust were a horrendous crime against humanity because they needlessly slaughtered

During Hitler’s reign in Nazi Germany there was research being done on people who may not have given consent and their basic rights as humans were being violated. The scientist that had been performing these experiments were tried for “war crimes”(Hyder) after World War II. Although these experiments that happened in Germany at the time did improve knowledge in the medical community the methods it was retrieved are questionable. Hyder is right to conclude that, “no country or medical association had adopted the Nuremberg Code in its entirety” but most look up to the codes, for standards on medical research and experiments. In the Nuremberg Codes it is specifically stated, “the human subject should… have sufficient knowledge and comprehensions of the elements… involved”(Hyder). This means even if a patient has less education than needed to comprehend what is going on then the doctor has the responsibility of informing and explaining to the patient of everything that could happen. The Codes are vague, because they do not explain what “sufficient knowledge” means. This leaves room for the doctors to stretch the consent forms, going back to Henrietta Lacks a doctor could argue that experimenting with immortal cells from her body do fit in her consent form. Her form stated, they could do what “was needed”, and maybe taking a sliver of cancerous cells from her

The proof is that there was a trial for German physicians who conducted these human experiments on concentration camp prisoners which were prosecuted as war criminals. Until now, the society still continue to discuss if it is acceptable in the medical community to consider the medical research data that were collected during these experimentations. Even some of these experiments had legitimate scientific purposes, the methods used violated the canons of medical ethics. Others were racial in nature, designed to advance Nazi racial theories. Most were simply bad science. Additionally, some believe there are major ethical problems with using the data collected in this unethical manner. Once a decision to use the data has been made, experts suggest that it must not be included as ordinary scientific research, just to be cited and placed in a medical journal. I agree with author Robert J. Lifton who suggested that citation of the data must contain a thorough expose' of exactly what tortures and atrocities were committed for that experiment. Citations of the Nazi data must be accompanied with the author's condemnation of the data as a lesson in horror and as a moral aberration in medical science. The author who chooses to use the Nazi data must be prepared to expose the Nazi doctors' immoral experiments as medical evil. I suggest that if I was a judge that time, I had most definitely torture the Germans in the same way as they tortured Jewish people. According to the philosophy written by Richard Matthews inside the book entitled "The Absolute Violation: Why Torture Must be Prohibited," he said “ It's a comprehensive refutation of the arguments in favor of torture, including act and rule utilitarianism, as well as "dirty

The Nuremberg Doctor’s trial of 1946 involves human experimentation performed by the Nazi doctors. These physicians were accused of conducting torturous “experiments” with concentration camp inmates. During these studies, physicians conducted treatments that were not permitted and caused severe injuries to the participants, and in some cases, participants died as a result of this. Prisoners were left to freeze to study more on hypothermia. Later, during December 9th, 1946 to August 20th, 1947 representatives establish a Nuremberg trial to prosecuted these doctors for the atrocities that they committed and 23 out 15 were found guilty. As a result, the Nuremberg code was created to

Both in and out of philosophical circle, animals have traditionally been seen as significantly different from, and inferior to, humans because they lacked a certain intangible quality – reason, moral agency, or consciousness – that made them moral agents. Recently however, society has patently begun to move beyond this strong anthropocentric notion and has begun to reach for a more adequate set of moral categories for guiding, assessing and constraining our treatment of other animals. As a growing proportion of the populations in western countries adopts the general position of animal liberation, more and more philosophers are beginning to agree that sentient creatures are of a direct moral concern to humans, though the degree of this

There are many ethical issues in the healthcare field. These issues range from insurance coverage, senior care, childhood immunizations, beneficence, abortion, medicinal marijuana, honesty and medical research (Fritzsche, D., 2004). Today we will discuss the ethical concerns in only one aspect of heath care and that topic is research (Benatar, S., 2000). Medical research is necessary in order to make strides in health care, introduce new medications, to discover new symptoms and disorders and to test new treatment options for current medical problems. Students of medicine, universities and pharmaceutical companies conduct this research primarily. Much of this research is time consuming and costly, therefore obtaining funding is not

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

Main ethical violations in clinical research that contribute to the abuse of subjects include paternalism, informed consent, lack of ethical supervision and the avoidance of legislation in relation to the ethics of health care and research. Human rights has been widely violated throughout history as seen in multiple events. As early as the 1930’s, researchers involved in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, withheld information and treatment from a large group of African American men with syphilis. Following this tragic event, Nazi concentration camps were established. German scientists conducted research with the involvement of the prisoners. Disfigurement, disabilities and death were often the results of the Nazi human experimentation. During the creation of the atomic bomb, the United States government sponsored the research of the involvement of subjects being exposed to radiation without their informed consent. In addition, James Watson and Francis Crick obtained their data of x-ray