The thing that caught my attention the most this week was in talking about research in the medical field. I was absolutely shocked to realize that studies such as the Tuskegee study and others have happened so recently in our nation's history. I understand that in the past, our culture as a whole has had some truly bad judgements on what is moral and immoral as shown by our history of slavery, racism, etc. but we never think of things like that occurring in today's society.
The one topic that I thought could use some expanding upon was the roles of physicians when it comes to research in medicine. We compared their role as a physician vs their role as a scientist but I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive. Although they have different general goals with the physician's being the best treatment and the scientist's being best data, I think the ultimate goal is for doctors to pursue both goals at the same time. We talked about how the physician is not really giving the patient's treatment first priority if that patient is in the control group, but I think this is untrue because once the study is over, if the treatment was found to be effective, even the control group can then be benefited by receiving it. Therefore, I believe research such as this done by a physician is morally permissible to do as long as there has been enough background research done as well as trials with mice to ensure that the patients will not be critically harmed.
I was also shocked when I first learned about the Tuskegee trials. I think a lot of the time we associate the idea of really unethical and awful medical research with the nazi experiments, and we don't realize that the US is actually guilty of committing unethical research as well.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you when you say that the role of a physician versus the role of a scientist should reinforce one another. I think when a physician conducts research they should keep in mind that this treatment will hopefully be benefiting their patients and future patients. I never thought of a physician acting as a scientist while conducting research, however, but I feel they sort of are to those who are receiving a placebo during research.
I agree that it should be possible for a doctor to act as both a physician and a scientist at the same time. The only issue I have with your argument is that, with some diseases that could be studied, the progression of the disease during the study could preclude the effectiveness of any treatment by the conclusion of the study. If the disease that is being studied advances to a stage where no treatment would be effective it is difficult to see the continuation of participation in the study as ethically allowable.
ReplyDelete@ghbphl229
ReplyDeleteThat is a really good point Geoffrey. I never thought about the implications of dealing with more rapidly progressing diseases where the patient might actually be harmed by going the length of the study without any treatment.
I'm sure that is why these kind of trials are voluntary so the patient can decide for themselves if being in the study is worth it. If there is no current treatment then I would assume the patient is just as well getting a placebo rather than no treatment but if there is currently a semi-effective drug out there that could slow the progression that they could take instead of being in the trial then that's where it would get tough to get patients to volunteer.
The drug testing subject has definitely peaked my interest as well, especially because the food and drug administration requires that drugs perform in testing at least as well as a placebo, which does nothing! It's astounding to me that there might be drugs on the market that only work as well as a placebo, but have potential negative side effects! I think it's very unethical to market and sell a drug, knowing that it provides no better results than a sugar pill, when negative side effects are possible.
ReplyDelete