Arguments Against Medical Testing

Amber Chavis
Ms. Smith
Argumentative Essay
December 8, 2014
Medical Testing on the Incarcerated
In the 1940s, the U.S. deliberately infected hundreds of Guatemalans with venereal diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea. They did so without any of the subjects’ consent. Many of the subjects that were experimented on were prisoners. The US conducted many experiments on these people in which 696 subjects were male prisoners and female patients in the National Mental Health Hospital of Guatemala. Years later, President Barack Obama called Álvaro Colom, Guatemala’s president, to personally apologize for the U.S. government research activities, but that is just one of the many horrific prisoner experiments that have occurred throughout history.
Over the years prisoners have been experimented on, without being able to give their consent. The ones that did give their consent, coercion was most likely involved. In cases where records show prisoners agreeing to give their consent, the prisoners were actually forced to do so or given a compromise. Medical research on prisoners violates the protection of prisoner’s rights. According to the United States Constitution, cruel and unusual punishment against prisoners should be prohibited. This means that the government has no right to inflict prisoners with cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment regardless of their crime. To treat prisoners that are on death row with nonconsensual medical experiments, without even informing them of the potential harm and risks, is a cruel and inhumane punishment without justification. It's absolutely degrading to treat prisoners as animals or objects without obtaining their consent, and making them as if they are human guinea pigs. This goes beyond the violation against the protection of liberty, basic human rights, and
Therefore, in order for medical research to be approved to be experimented on a human subject, certain regulations must be considered. According to the Bioethics, Medical Ethics and Health Law, such regulations include, “1.) Experiments on human subjects are performed after experiments on animals have shown that a drug or technique has a reasonable possibility of benefiting human beings. In assessing the desirability and acceptability of the experiment, one should consider the severity of the disorder together with the possible side effects of the experimental treatment. 2.) Potential subjects must give informed consent. Informed consent is necessary for the personal autonomy of the subject. 3.) Researcher, as a physician, also has an obligation to neither harm nor exploit the patients/subjects”. Based on the previous medical experimentations on incarcerated human subjects, at least one of these regulations was and is violated. Even though someone is deprived the right to live, does not means that they are deprived from their right to choose what happens to their body. At this point the government is not only taking one’s life away, but also restricting their personal autonomy to do anything to their body. By now, this is going beyond what is known to be illegal. Normally patients are expected to be