Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

Introduction
There is absolutely no doubt that scientific research with its resultant discoveries is paramount for the welfare and survival of mankind. The status of scientific research has somewhat been put on a pedestal, not for good reason as it is almost always associated with brilliant minds and important findings. But as one delves and learns more about the prevailing environments and the methods used in earlier scientific research, especially where human subjects were used, it is apparent that the emphasis was more on the ‘subject’ and not the ‘human’.
For centuries, the questions of justice and ethics – what is right and what is not fair – were “mainly confined to the more obvious social practices such as punishment, taxation and politics. There was little questioning associated with scientific research.” (Sade, 2003)
Early scientific research on human beings has been reported since the 18th century, when prisoners in 1721 at Newgate were pardoned if they agreed to undergo variola vaccination and in 1776 when Edward Jenner began a series of cowpox vaccinations in children (Grodin, 1992). No ethical guidelines existed, however, until Thomas Percival wrote, in 1803: “... [It] is for the public good... that new remedies and new methods of chirurgical treatment should be devised... And no such trials should be instituted without a previous consultation of the physicians or surgeons according to the nature of the case” (Sade, 2003). However, Percival did not mention protecting the interests of human subjects.
It was not until the 19th century that William Beaumont, writing about his classic experiments on Alexis St. Martin, expressed the view that research should be carried out only on subjects who voluntarily consented (Beecher, 1970, as cited in Sade, 2003).
But why was it that the human subjects seemed to have no voice? It was because that most of them were either poor ward patients (Johnson, 2002), the...