Willowbrook Conflict Between Research and Ethics

I was purely shocked after reading about Willowbrook State School. I believe that they violated all four ethic principles of medicine: respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice. Respect for autonomy mean protecting the patients right to make their own decisions (Harrington, 2015, p. 297). First of all, the patients themselves were mentally handicapped children and were not able to make their own decisions. Second of all, the parents were not given proper informed consent because not all information about what was being done to the patients were disclosed. Nonmaleficence means that providers should "do no harm" their patients (Harrington, 2015, p. 297). This was violated when they purposely infected the patients for experimental

In this case study, there were a few incidents of violations of ethics. In 1998, Callahan recommends that researchers should follow the three ethical issues: Autonomy, beneficence, and human justice. Autonomy is the first ethical principle that a researcher should respect the participate and make sure that informed consent has been given. The participates of this study was not aware the risk or what the study was about and actually could not give consent legally because they were minors. Johnson and Tudor did not give full disclosure of this research to the minors, teachers, or matrons at the orphanage. Beneficence is the second ethical principle; the researcher should maximize

State institutions that house individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities have been a prominent part of history in the health professions. In 1967 in the United States, there were more than a quarter of a million state institutions that housed individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities (Waldman, 2017). One state institution that was around during that time period was Willowbrook State School which was located on Staten Island in New York City and was one of the largest run state schools for people with developmental disabilities. Willowbrook at its peak was home to over 6000 residents when its capacity was for just 4000 (Kaser, 2005). Willowbrook was a state institution that is most often described for dehumanizing its patients. Willowbrook housed both children and

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 current times, children are not getting infected with diseases in order to find curative vaccines, but they are being made part of clinical trials for studies of genetic screening, the enrollment of healthy children in studies of sibling bone marrow donation, and the use of hypothermia for neonates with asphyxia (Laventhal, Tarini & Lantos, 2012). These trial studies have become ethical dilemmas in pediatrics for various reasons, people believe that there are not strong enough regulations for these trials and also that children are not given the opportunity to make their own decisions, most of the time, because children are underage, parents are the ones who make the decision of making their children part of these studies. Current regulations for pediatric clinical trials only require the consent of one parent, unless they are high level risk trials, in which case both parents needs to give approval and the child must also assent. The issue of children given assent for high risk trials is controversial because how do we know that the children really understand the risks that are associated with the trials, do they fully understand that they could possibly get hurt and sometimes their lives can be in danger.

Susie O’Brien is driven to write about how anti-vaccinators are putting other kids' lives at danger and additionally their own. By using an anecdote of a boy named Riley, “the latest was a darling boy named Riley Hughes, from Western Australia, who was just four weeks old when he died last week” O’Brien highlights that a boy who was just

The history of research ethics begins with tragic historical cases of unethical research and how they contributed toward present values and ethics in research. One of these historical tragic studies was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama. This post will discuss the unethical behavior of that study.

Vaccination is widely considered one of the greatest medical achievements of modern civilization (Harvard Law School, 2007). Childhood deaths from infectious diseases were commonplace less than a generation ago; however they’re now increasingly rare due to vaccines. In order to be effective at eliminating communicable diseases, vaccines must be administrated to a sufficient level of people in the community. However, there has been plenty of controversy over the morality, ethics, effectiveness and safety of immunization. It has been argued in the past whether laws should be introduced that render some vaccines obligatory for all children (Singer, 2009). These objections may lead to an unacceptably high number of exemptions, which can compromise vaccination programs and leave the population susceptible to outbreaks. Parents argue that it is they who should have the ultimate decision-making right on whether or not to vaccinate their children. Whereas nurses and health care officials oppose that view on the grounds that by making vaccination rates in children incomplete, we expose all children to contracting the vaccine-preventable diseases. The most recent Australian Childhood Immunization Register coverage report illustrates that 92.1% of children aged 12 to 15 months have been fully immunized in Australia (ACIR, 2014). A survey was conducted for the Mansfield community to analyze and identify the factors which prevents them from vaccinating their children.The

Human experimentation has a history of scandal that often shapes people’s views of the ethics of research. Often the earliest cited case is English physician Edward Jenner’s development of the smallpox vaccine in 1796,where he injected an eight-year-old boy child with pus taken from a cowpox infection and then deliberately exposed her to an infected carrier of smallpox. Although Jenner’s experiment was successful and it confirmed his theory, the method of

Hendrix, Kristin S., et al. "Ethics and Childhood Vaccination Policy in the United States." American Journal of Public Health, vol. 106, no. 2, Feb. 2016, pp. 273-278. EBSCOhost, doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302952.

Willowbrook was designed in 1958 as an idea to build a school for the developmentally disabled. The New York legislature approved more than 5 million dollars to purchase 375 acres of land in the Northern part of Staten Island. Thirty building were erected completely surrounded by woods. When it was finished in 1941 the World War II was ending and veterans were just returning home. Veterans Administration took over the building to care for their wounded. The temporary name was Halloran General Hospital. It wasn’t until 1951 that Willowbrook opened its doors as “Willowbrook State School for people with disabilities.” Within the first 4 years Willowbrook surpassed its capacity of 2,950 by housing about 3,600 residents. Parents during that time were pressured by society, doctors, and even the court system to place their children who did not meet society’s standards of “normal.” By 1965 Willowbrook housed over 6,000 residents. This institution had the highest population in all of New Your State of disabled people along with the highest population of African Americans and Puerto Ricans. More than 200,000 people with disabilities nation wide were dumped into different institutions. The first legislative social reform gave families no other choices. The Federal Government did not provide any assistance to help keep their children stay home. Willowbrook became a dumping ground for the developmentally disabled where they were subjected to deplorable conditions, abuse and even

"In the United States, the childhood immunization schedule recommends that children receive approximately 15 vaccinations by 19 months of age, and it specifies ages for administration of each vaccination dose" (Luman, Barker, McCauley, & Drews-Botsch, 2005, p. 1367). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a vaccine is "a product that produces immunity therefore protecting the body from the disease" (Vaccines and Immunizations, 2015). Currently, there are many individuals advocating for and opposing the effects of the administration of vaccinations and immunizations in the United States. There are both legal and ethical issues surrounding the controversy, which include both deliberate and exogenous reasons not to vaccinate, and the mandatory nature that is required by many schooling districts and places of employment. Within this paper, I will discuss some legal implications surrounding vaccination, ethical debates that are current in the topic, as well as my point of view regarding immunizations and vaccinations.

The children at Willowbrook had many different types of mental disabilities and were unable to legally give consent. The letter that

Krugman and Giles felt justified in their decision by say, “It was inevitable that susceptible children would become infected in the institution”. Meaning any child who came to Willowbrook would contract hepatitis within the first six to twelve months of being a resident at Willowbrook. By the early 70’s Willowbrook had become the topic of discussion because of their deplorable conditions and for all the abuse that had been cause by the institution to the residents.

It raises a question about the morality of immunization: should children feel pain and be protected from childhood diseases, or should they not be subjected to the pain but suffer from the consequences of these diseases? It is this argument that has considerably influenced the debates on whether to legalize immunization in Canada or not. Another point of contention is the scientific ramifications of using a vaccine in children. Vaccines, as compared to other medicines, may have side effects which can cause subtle or long-term implications. Gilmour, Harrison, Asadi, Cohen, and Vohra (4) contend that vaccines may be beneficial, but they may also carry some risks. The issues of law, ethics, and the right for medical treatment as well as information regarding the vaccine fuel the debates on immunization in the