What Is The Price Knowledge Essay, Research Paper

What Is the Price Knowledge

I feel there is a definite need for knowledge in todays society, but

there is also a definite point when it has gone too far. It has gone too far

by conducting experiments on people without letting them know the consequences

and side effects that will place upon them. It has also reached an extreme

when the person becomes physically or mentally impaired after the experiments .

I see this treatment as both immoral and unethical; there is no reason to harm

a normally healthy person for some advancement in scientific knowledge .

In doing research for this paper I have found many examples where

humans were used as “guinea pigs” or killed. One example of this misconduct

was in 1959 it was a common practice for drug companies to provide samples of

experimental drugs, to physicians, who were then paid to gather data on their

patients taking the drugs. Physicians throughout the country prescribed there

drugs to patients without their knowledge or consent as part of this loosely

controlled research. Example of this was the drug sedative thalidomide was

given to vast number of pregant women and caused thousands of birth defects in

newborn infants. Because of this event, the Kefauver – Harris amendmants to

food, drug and cosmetic act were passed requiring informal consent be obtained

in the testing of these drugs.

Another rascality research project was doctors injected live cancer

cells into underprivileged elderly patients without their permission. The

research went forward without review by the hospital’s research committee and

over the objections of three physicians consulted, who argued that the proposed

subjects were unfit of giving ample consent to participate. The revealing of

the experiment served to make both officials and the Board of Regents of the

University of the State of New York, aware of the shortcomings of procedures in

place to protect human subjects. They were further concerned over the public’s

reaction to revealing of the research and the impact it would have on research

generally and the institutions in particular. After a review the Board of

Regents disapproved the researchers. They suspended the licenses of Dr.’s

Mandel and Southam, but since delayed the suspension and placed the physicians

on probation for one year.

Another example took place during World War II. The new field of

radiation science was at the center of one of the most ambitious and concealed

research efforts the world has known Human radiation experiments. They were

undertaken in secret to help understand radiation risks to workers engaged in

the development of the atomic bomb. Following the war, the new Atomic Energy

Commission used facilities to make the atomic bomb to produce radioisotopes

for medical research and other peacetime uses. This highly publicized program

provided the radioisotopes that were used in thousands of human experiments

conducted in research plants throughout the country. The Government didn’t

really know if anything happened to the patients until the Advisory Committee

did studies involving children that had exposures to radioisotope that were

associated with increases in the possible lifetime risk for developing thyroid

cancer that would be considered unacceptable today. The Advisory Committee also

identified several studies in which patients died soon after receiving external

radiation or radioisotope portions in the healing range that were associated

with radiation effects.

In these cases which I have researched, many committees have

implemented to set a standard set of rules and requirements to keep human

experimentation under control. This process is something I agree with and I

would have liked to see developed some time ago. Having looked over the

examples above I can not get over what the government and researchers did to

these innocent people in the past. I think the government and the researchers

should compensate the population that was tested in some form, be it money,

apologies, etc..