Pros And Cons Of Equipoise

Freedman disagrees with the view of equipoise because he believes that “Equipoise doesn’t not depend on uncertainty in the physician but on the genuine disagreement in the medical community about a treatment’s value because of a lack of good evidence gleaned from randomized clinical trials” (259). According to critics, equipoise is lost when a physician has a slight belief that one treatment is inferior to the other. Freedman disagrees and believes that equipoise is disrupted when there is a large disagreement between health care providers. If a physician has a slight doubt in a treatment, it’s not enough to stop the continuation of a patient’s participation in a clinical trial.

Freedman acknowledges the arguments of the Hellmans that patients “‘ought not to be treated merely as means to an end” but disagrees as he believes that clinical trials put patients in the situation where they become “means to a scientific end” rather than taking the patient’s well-being seriously (262). Freedman argues that clinical trials do not look out for the best interests of their patients but rather the science conclusions and advancements that researchers would gain from their experiments. When the
The USPHS conducted the study and prevented the proper treatment of these patients to the extent that if they tried to reach medical attention from another health facility, they would be denied treatment. The scientists viewed and treated the patients as a part of those who had the a barbaric nature and would extinct from society. Overall, the study had no scientific or medical benefit but revealed the racism and discrimination the black Africans were subjected to. The patients were taken advantage of and mistreated in a vulnerable state of illness and