Answer the following.
What makes the medical experiments in Tuskegee, Guatemala, Nazi Germany, and elsewhere so repugnant is the brute disregard for human life based upon race or ethnicity, and the clear violation of an individual’s right to informed consent.
We have discovered that in regards to human experimentation, informed consent means two things. First, that a patient is informed as much as he or she can be in regards to the experiment, and second, that the patient gives their free and un-coerced consent to participate.
But there are many gray areas with the standard of informed consent. Consider the following scenario:
It is May of 2024. The World Health Organization is debating whether or not to send a team of doctors to test a new medication in several developing nations. The drugs are designed to prevent pregnant women who are HIV-positive from transmitting the virus to their newborns, and the tests are to take place in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to the experiment, the volunteers from this region (all whom are pregnant and have HIV) will be divided into two groups. One group will be given the drug, and the other- a placebo (a pill with no medical properties). “It is the only way to test the medication” explains one of the doctors.
Community leaders from the region are reluctantly supportive of the experiments. Says a member of a community center in a poorer community in Africa: “What is the alternative? The people here receive no treatment whatsoever. Something is better than nothing.”
Some in these communities feel that the locals are being exploited. “Are we going to reap the benefits of these drugs if they are shown to work?,” asked one person. “I don’t think so; they will be for the first-world and the wealthy West.”
One of the head doctors behind the experiments immediately responds: “the patients all give their informed consent, and these experiments may rescue millions of lives in the future. And eventually, all over the world.”
Should these experiments continue? Why or why not?
