The Unethicality of the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital Study

Given the patients were treated for free, using them as research subjects acted as a form of payment. I can see how the doctor’s felt justified to do so. In this case, although un-ethical today, I would have to agree with their reasoning. With a rare-form of tumor on their hands, taking samples from both the tumor and healthy tissue could be deemed of great use for the future. And taking the, seemingly, healthy tissue would only aid in the understanding of how the tumor may have formed in the first place. As a question of ethics, the doctor’s actions are tricky to address. However, if

During the holocaust prisoners of concentration camps were faced with evil, torture and death every day. Some of the prisoners in these camps were selected for Nazi medical experiments. Nazi doctors performed several different human experiments on prisoners throughout the Holocaust. A specifically horrific experiment was the twin experiments. This experiment was performed by Dr. Joseph Mengele and several of his assistants in Auschwitz. He is known for performing some of the most inhumane experiments during the holocaust.

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.

The Holocaust was a terrible event that will never be forgotten. One of the worst events that happened was the experiments done on Jews. The experiments done on Jews during the Holocaust, such as freezing experiments, genetic experiments, and experiments on organs, were inhumane and unjustifiable.

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

These experiments were not only full of hate but also used for the advancement of medicine and effective treatment of the patient. Some were just out of fascination and believed they were for the better of the Aryan race. Injecting prisoners with chemicals, raising and lowering body temperature, and comparing the vitals of twins under extreme conditions are just three ways doctors of the Holocaust used prisoners for medical advancement. Since that age and time we have strived to move forward from that period and time and focus more on the patient's well being rather than the

First, Skloot’s claim is supported by the patients from jail because they were not told the injection contained cancer cells. The author states in paragraph four page one hundred thirty, “The deception was for his best – he was withholding information because patients might have refused to participate in his study if they’d known what he was injected.” Also, in paragraph 3 page 130 she states, “Because of that “phobia and ignorance,” Southam wrote, he didn’t tell patients the cells were cancerous because he didn’t want to cause any unnecessary fear.” These quotes reveal how the jail patients were not aware of what was being injected. The doctor didn’t want to inform the patients they were being injected with cancer cells because he knew they would think about backing away, proving Skloot’s claim.

As research and technology progress forward in time, the ethical considerations that must be taken along with, not only method of study but social ramifications continues to grow exponentially. At the time when cells were taken unknowingly from Mrs. Lacks, there were not strict regulatory guidelines as to how consent should be required along with many other now ill-practice methods of medicine seen at the time. Despite agreeing that the

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

Mengele – The doctor violated this principle simply by harming his subjects. Dr. Mengele performed numerous experiments to include surgical procedures without anesthesia, collection and harvesting of tissue samples, and murdering subjects to facilitate a post-mortem examination (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ND). Dr. Mengele’s experiments demonstrated no beneficence for his subjects.

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

Throughout history there are many examples of humans conducting experiments on other humans. Over the years human experimentation has greatly advanced the knowledge of human physiology and psychology, leading to better treatments for ailments both physical and mental as well as a better overall understanding of the human constitution. Despite all of the good which human experimentation has done for the human race there have been times when experimenters have taken human experimentation past the bounds of morality. This unethical human experimentation is most often caused when the experimenters are, in some way, able to justify their experiments.

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

The uncontrollable spread of cancer is the principal event which leads to the death in individuals with cancer and it is the greatest barrier of developing cures for cancer. Metastasis is the progressive spread of malignant cancer cells from the primary tumour to secondary organ in distant sites and this potential is dependent on the specific microenvironment which support them to complete each step of the metastatic process (Poste & Fidler 1980). To understand the molecular basis of metastasis, investigators have now separated the complex and highly selective metastasis process into series of steps to try and solve the problems cause by