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Healthcare decision-making
Published in Joseph Tham, Alberto García Gómez, Mirko Daniel Garasic, Cross-Cultural and Religious Critiques of Informed Consent, 2021
Joseph Tham, Marie Catherine Letendre
Spurred on by the rights movements of the 1960s, changes in medical decision-making characterized a decade animated by political, religious and social unrest. Scholars from several fields, namely, moral theology and religious studies as well as medicine, law and biology, became increasingly involved in medical ethical issues. Henry K. Beecher published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Ethics and Clinical Research” (1966) in which he outlined 22 real cases of unethical human experimentation.3 This and other scandals generated a great deal of uproar among the public and the government reacted by commissioning specialists in ethics to come up with guidelines which eventually included the standards of informed consent.
Designer Poisons
Published in Alan Perkins, Life and Death Rays, 2021
Whilst some of these mass poisonings, exposures and infestations were carried out as acts of war, a common feature of the experiments undertaken in individuals is that they were often committed against the vulnerable and the powerless. In an attempt to provide clear rules on what was legal when conducting human experiments, the Nuremberg Code was introduced in August 1947, following the Nuremberg trials of Nazi doctors who were convicted of the crimes of human experimentation on concentration camp prisoners. This stated that it was necessary to obtain the participant’s voluntary consent without exception and that they had the right to withdraw from the experiment at any time. This was subsequently superseded by the Declaration of Helsinki which established the modern guidelines for medical research ethics. The statement of ethical research principles was first adopted in 1964 by the World Medical Association to provide framework for physicians and other investigators conducting medical research involving human subjects. Despite signing up to these principles, individuals and countries continued to undertake unethical human experimentation during peace time.
Medical microbiology
Published in Lois N. Magner, Oliver J. Kim, A History of Medicine, 2017
In the course of assembling unequivocal evidence that Bacillus tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) is the specific cause of tuberculosis, Koch formalized the criteria now known as Koch's Postulates that must be satisfied to prove that a particular microbe is the cause of a particular disease. To satisfy Koch's Postulates, the investigator must prove that the suspected microorganism is invariably associated with the disease. Combining such observations with evidence that the microbe was not found in healthy individuals or in those suffering from other diseases was suggestive, but not compelling. Unequivocal proof required isolating the microbe and growing pure cultures to be sure that the microbe of interest had been separated from contaminating tissues, toxins, and other microbes. After the alleged pathogen had been serially cultured, it had to be inoculated into healthy animals. If pure laboratory cultures induced the disease in experimental animals, the microbe had to be isolated from those animals to prove that a causal relationship existed between the microbe and the disease. For some human diseases, like cholera, typhoid, and leprosy, it was impossible to satisfy Koch's Postulates because no suitable experimental animal had been found. To provide unequivocal evidence in such cases would require unethical human experimentation. Koch's postulates were formulated for studies of infectious disease, but his general approach has been extended to guide studies of other disorders, such as the health hazards posed by asbestos and other chemicals.
What to Expect When Expecting CRISPR Baby Number Four
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2019
Christopher Thomas Scott, Cynthia Selin
In the wake of reports that a Chinese biophysicist, He Jiankui, used a genome editing technology, CRISPR/Cas9, to modify the CCR5 gene in viable human embryos, the criticism from the international scientific and bioethics communities has been swift and unrelenting. The overwhelming conclusion is that Dr. He’s procedure was deceptive, violated Chinese law, flaunted international ethical norms, and put the babies at physical risk. It was, simply put, unethical human experimentation. Dr. He has since disappeared, raising the question whether the experiment was a hoax. The long shadow of Hwang Woo-suk—the infamous human cloning fraudster—is now cast upon the scene.