The Ethics of Biomedical Research

The chapter tackles and explains the many unethical issues in scientific researches. The ethics of the researcher, ethics of the user of the research results, fetal experimentation, genetic therapy, and reproductive and therapeutic cloning are the main topics discussed in this chapter. Through the central themes and subtopics, it is evident that therapeutic and nontherapeutic researches should ensure they act with the participant’s best interest, avoiding unreasonable risks such as death, or disability, and their participants should have signed consents to be involved in the researches (Baillie, 2013). It is evident that scientists tend to ignore or use deception in issues they know telling the truth would result in a limited number of willing participants in the studies. The subject of studies that do not benefit the participants whereas cause injuries or threaten their welfare are many hence the discussion and guideline to follow when undertaking a clinical research to avoid issues such as conflict of interest, double-blind, discrimination, informed consent, payment of the costs in case the investigation goes wrong.

The author provides detailed examples to illustrate the multiple ethical issues ignored and resulting to fear and stigmatization of the people more probable to acquire the ailments after genetic therapy. The other main moral problem is the based on researches involving fetus. The studies tend to disrespect the right to life for the fetus due to the lack of universally acceptable stage the fetus becomes a person (Baillie, 2013). The authors have illustrated the need to prevent serious researches or over-ambitious studies that tend to subject humans as research objects. The relevance of humanity in undertaking all studies is evident in all topics thus demonstrating that scientific knowledge that disrespect the participants and the society must be avoided. The ethics behind undertaking studies without informed consent for the sake of improving the patient’s welfare or with the best interests in mind such as the HeLa cell (Baillie, 2013). Lastly, the authors acknowledge that cloning of human is unethical as it does not address the importance of social and family connections or modifying people would risk the lives of the patients and surrogates.

Reference

Baillie, H. W. (2013). Health care ethics . Boston: Prentice Hall.