The Tuskegee syphilis study is a horrific example of medical researchers abusing participants in the name of science. The abuse is almost hard to fathom in the abstract: researchers allowing African American men to die from syphilis despite known effective treatment. The abuse becomes all the more real when you hear the individual stories of the men affected by the 40 year study. The stories come alive in the movie Miss Evers' Boys. No one advocated on behalf of these men. No one spoke up to protect them. Those who tried to speak up went unheard. Nurse Evers tried her best to care for the men and nurse them in their time of need, but even she was lead to believe that letting these men die was the best she could do for the future of science.
Jumping through institutional review board hoops can be aggravating at times, and may even seem to inhibit research. But these regulations are in place to protect real people. And protecting the rights and safety of research subjects needs to be as important as the data being collected.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment