The Pros And Cons Of Human Experimentation

Humans in experimentation: such an abstract ideal to wrap one’s head around. Movies portray such experiments with extreme dissections, and advanced technology. Experiments concluding of tests that test capabilities of humans physically and mentally, to observe how much the body reacts to drugs, chemicals and much more. Experiments that are physically painful, as well as torturous to the subject participating in the event. Many of these portrayed experiments seem quite extreme to become a reality, however there are many reported cases of human experimentation that exists within our society, to this day. Nonetheless, there are many cases containing issues with human rights, as some experiments pass the line from moral to unethical. Emphasizing
Vulnerable populations conclude of people that have a disadvantage compared to regular average citizens of society. For example, in the Tuskegee Syphilis study, researchers studied the “natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor black men who received free health care from the government.” (Gorski 2-3) In this instance, this experiment seems to take advantage of poor black men due to the fact that they could not pay for their own health care and need to receive free health care from the government. A reasonable experiment should consist of all consenting people of different genders, races, from rich and poor incomes. However, due to the use of one type of population, it seems as this instance only uses poor black men because those men would be the only subjects that could be forced into participating due their lack of money and lack of ability to take litigation. Although, does it seem morally right to do such? To take one’s happiness away due to race and lack of finances to fund legal support? Such actions do not seem moral, nonetheless fair to these
Informed consent is a process of obtaining permission from the person who is participating in an event. Despite that, many researchers deem it necessary to skip such an important step and continue on with research, as research is the priority to them. As stated before, the Tuskegee Syphilis study lacked informed consent significantly. This study forced poor black men to participate, but also restricted these men into receiving widely known treatment. (Gorski 2-3) If informed consent was given, the subjects of this study would have been informed that they would be denied treatment. However, this concludes that the subjects didn’t have any idea about getting denied treatment or they would’ve reconsidered participating in this experiment. Benevolent deception could play a portion in this since the researchers may have needed more subjects, however the subject should have the right to know exactly every action that is happening to them. Overall, these poor infected individuals could not receive proper treatment to a disease they possibly didn’t know they were