Historical background
The Nazi human experimentation involved the conduction of such experiments on a large number of prisoners. This included the children prisoners. The Nazi physicians forced individuals in the concentration camps to engage in those experiments something that sometimes-resulted in trauma, disfigurement or death. Under the command of Eduard Wirths, the selected inmates were mainly subjected to hazardous experiments. Extreme experiments were done to study the muscles and bones and their regeneration. Bone transplantation from one person to another was done, often resulting in deformities of such individuals. Head based experiments often resulted in the individuals becoming insane. Fertility, malaria and other tests were conducted at those camps often resulting in harm to the individuals. It nevertheless helped in medical discoveries in some cases, aiding in the treatment of the injured or sick soldiers. Nevertheless, there were more cons than pros in the testing processes and the test on human subjects especially the prisoners were halted.
. History is rife on scenarios where prisoners have been involved in clinical trials in the past. In 1946, hundreds of prisoners in Guatemala were deliberately infected with syphilis. Some of the male prisoners were infected through direct injection. Others got infected after visiting prostitutes who were purposely infected with the disease by the prisons department. None of the participants were asked to provide their consent on the infection (NCBI, 2020). Involvement of prisoners in clinical trials was thus mainly done through coercions against the rights of such prisoners. With time, such breach of the rights of the prisoners was noted and the United States as well as other countries implemented measures of excluding such inmates from clinical trials. Ethicists and law makers view the involvement of the prisoners in such trials as a breach of tehri rights. The efforts between preventing the prisoners form undergoing exploitation and the need for advancing their health has continued to date. In a transactional setting, exploitation occurs when an individual or organizations takes advantage of another person or organization.
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In 1976, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects provided guidelines on ethics of involving the prisoners in the research process. It took the actions against the background of the Nazi experiments within the concentration camp.
Pros
One of the key merits of using the prisoners in clinical trials is that it results in the discovery of new methods of treatment. Such trials help in identifying the efficacy of various forms of intervention in treating diverse conditions. Equally, the prisoners are easily accessible. It may take long before the medical personnel secure other primates for trials as compared to the prisoners who are readily available in prisons and who may easily accept coercion in the experimentation process. In fact, the only rule against the use of prisoners’ in clinical trials is the common rule part c and only provides guidelines for the federally funded research. Physicians may thus easily access permission from prison authorities to conduct the experimentation on the prisoners. It is also important to note that research may help in enhancing the welfare of the inmates. When new drugs or clinical procedures are discovered that may help address the challenges faced by the prisoners, their overall health outcomes are realized. For instance, if the individual prisoners are engaged in the experimentation for conditions such as the HIV and tuberculosis which adversely affects the prisoners, coming up with a treatment for these diseases based on experimentations on the prisoners will help in significantly boosting their health outcomes. In this perspective, it is clear that the use of experiments on the prisoners may also be beneficial.
Cons
There are various challenges that come with the use of the prisoners in clinical trials. For instance, the move is unethical. The prisoners are engaged in the trials without their consent. This results in the breach of their rights and should not eb continued. Equally, the past history has indicated that most of the prisoners that were involved in trials in the US and the Nazi Germany ended up harmed, insane and in some cases they died from the trials. The benefits sought through such trials were not aimed at boosting their welfare but the welfare of other people. Such trials may thus pose limited if any benefits to the individuals who are involved in the trials. It is thus clear that the health acre personnel may not eb justified in conducting such trials on such inmates as opposed to conducting the same trials on other individuals in the public.
Conducting of trails on inmates is tantamount to treating them as animals. There are many animals that can be used in the trials including those of the primate class and rats. It is inhuman to engage the prisoners in trials that are harmful when in essence; the trials could have been conducted on the other animals. There are many past studies and trials that have been conducted on chimps that have proved to be very beneficial in human interventions. Equally, rodents have been used in the past to discover the efficacy of various drugs and forms of intervention in humans. Failing to use such rodents and instead focusing the trials ion the prisoners, indicates a natural injustice. Instead the physicians should focus on using the animals in trials something that would result in almost the same health outcomes and inferences as those that would have been discovered through trials.
In some cases, scientists may decide to conduct clinical trials on the prisoners. When the medical practitioners want to conduct medical trials on humans, there is a need to masker sure that such individuals are health and in the right condition. Such individuals need to have adequate food, mentally health, the right temperatures, water and comfort among other elements. These are key elements that prisoners lack and hence engaging the in trails would result realization of findings which may be wrong to generalize on the entire population. It would thus be wrong to engage the prisoners in clinical trials and experiments. It is also important to note that while doctors may assess the heath thus of the prisoners, such individuals do not come with their lifetime medical histories (Christopher, & Stein, 2016). Lack of such information results in reduced efficacy of the inferences made from the trials. It is also important to note that the federal law of the United States of America has not made provisions on keeping tab of the individuals who are harmed from clinical experiments and those who realize health outcomes within prisons. Physicians may thus end up harming thousands of individuals through multiple trials before they can get their desired outcomes. It would thus be wrong to allow such experiments among prisoners as it maty result in more harm than good.
Conclusion
Based on the above historical background and arguments on the use of prisoner’s in clinical experiments, it is clear that it has more harm than good to such individuals. Some individuals end up getting life long disability and even death. It is also clear that the law has made limited provisions on clinical trials and experiments on prisoner creating high chances of harm to such individuals. Medical experiments should thus not eb done using prisoners as the subjects
References
Christopher, P., & Stein, M. (2016). Exploitation of prisoners in clinical research: Perceptions of
study participants. PMC 2(1 ), 1-6
NCBI (2020). Ethical considerations for research involving prisoners. Retrieved form
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19885/
