The 1940's Guatemala experiments were considered one of the darkest chapters of medical research in U.S. history. The U.S. Public Health Service and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau worked with the Guatemalan government agencies to do medical research that involved exposing people to STDs. Recently, a presidential panel disclosed more shocking details of the experiment and revealed the abhorrent practices of researchers of that era, including an incident of re-infecting a dying woman in a syphilis study. Another example is injecting syphilis below the back of the skull of seven women with epilepsy. Other victims including soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners, and mental patients were infected with sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid. Also, the researchers did not get the informed consent of their subjects. The Guatemala experiment was even considered bad compared to other searches of the same time, which participants of the other experiments are being informed of the studies and gave their consent. It is revealed lately that out of 1,300 people infected, only about 700 received some sort of treatment, and that this experiment resulted in at least 83 deaths, in which the cause may or may not be directly due to the experiments. Guatemala’s president, Alvaro Colom, is called by President Barack Obama to apologize and the commission has also been working on examining federally funded international studies to ensure researches are being done ethically.
"The researchers put their own medical advancement first and human decency a far second," said Anita Allen, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Thus, the argument presented here is the debate between medical advancement versus human decency. This experiment draws an uncertain line between what is ethical and what is not.
From the point of view of the experimenters, medical advancement is the main concern; therefore their actions are justified with their reasons. The aim of the study was to test to see if penicillin could prevent infections of the infected subjects, and the experimentation cannot be done without human sacrifices. Of course human subjects can be replaced by other options, however, the result may be different and the technology of the period didn’t allow the researchers to conduct their experiments on other subjects. The intentions of the researchers were not at all immoral, in fact the experiment was conducted for research purposes and in hope to find better treatments and cure for sexually transmitted disease. Most medical research is held to be valid in that it is conducted in hope to alleviate human suffering. Some would argue that if it wasn’t for the research back then, medical technology will not be where it is right now and perhaps more lives would be sacrificed in the future in result of diseases and injuries. From the viewpoint of others that are concerned about human decency would argue that this experiment was not morally right. Most people would argue that these experiments should not be conducted under any circumstances without the consent of the partakers. Individual rights should be put before all else because everyone deserves to be treated equally and with respect, no matter if the subject was a dying person or not. Even if an individual is dying, he or she still has the right to live for as long as they can.
A lot of medical researches back then and nowadays have to conduct its experiments on human and/or animal subjects; does that mean all of these researches are unethical? Should medical advancement be weighed more than human decency or the other way around? Is there a scale of humanity and who is it to judge human decency? Ethics is an issue that is subjected to personal beliefs and cannot be defined for everyone’s capacity for human acts is different. Ethics is an abstract set of values that everyone holds and can only be measured based on personal experiences such as education, religion, and culture. If ethics is based on the beliefs one develops from personal experiences and emotions, then the issue here cannot be settled as ethical or unethical.
The Guatemala experiment draws attention to the debate between the ethics in medical research. This argument can be seen in other cases such as artificial cloning, stem cell research, and pharmaceutical trial testing in Third World countries. Although today’s research is probably not as egregious as that of the Guatemala experiment, there are still studies out there that lie on the fine line between what is ethically right and wrong.
I agree that ethics play a central role in this issue, because human lives are on the line. Is it ethical that these people sacrifice for the greater good? A new aspect of ethics in the issue to explore would be governmental influence. The medical research appeared to be hugely influenced by political agendas (U.S. paid for the medical research-why not do the experiments on Americans? Why bother going to Guatemala? What did Guatemala gain from it-resources, stronger relations with U.S.?). And we know that previously, the U.S. had also sponsored CIA waterlogging and other torture studies on prisoners. Given the U.S. government’s background on human experimentation, this issue draws attention to whether the government is morally using its power. Also, as a nation that champions democratic ideals, is it ethical for the U.S. to test people of other nationalities but not its own? Is it ethical for the U.S. to test people who are ill or imprisoned but not others?
ReplyDeleteI think that the ethical questions surrounding human testing are similar to those raised by animal experimentation. It is an unfortunate fact that almost all modern medicine would be impossible without animals being exploited in much the same way as the subjects of the Guatemala experiments. This is also similar to the Nazi human experiments committed at Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
ReplyDeleteIt is very hard to say whether such sickening experiments are morally acceptable. While they are torturous to the subjects, they do provide great benefits to society---for example, colposcopy was developed with experimental data from Auschwitz. If an experiment is similarly cruel to participants, but yields results that save many many lives, should it be accepted?
Vast numbers of animals undergo similar experiments everyday---this highlights another set of moral questions. Is it right for humans to perform experiments on animals they would not allow on themselves?