The issue of ethics and morals in biomedical researches has been constantly raised for the last century. There are too many sharp questions the researchers face while providing their experiments. Is it ethical to hold the experiments upon animals? What about the moral side of applying stem cells? Is it right to use placebo? Moral and ethical aspects of biomedical engineering research will be discussed in this essay.
First, let us define the concepts of ethics and morals. Ethics refers to “the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.” (“Dictionary.com” par. 2). Meaning that ethics establishes rules and norms of people’s behavior in certain situations. Morals refers to “principles or habits with respect to right or wrong conduct” (“Dictionary.com” par. 11). Meaning something that guides people’s behavior and directs actions, determines them as “good” or “bad” within the society. All the two concepts highly depend on and reflect the level of society’s development, introduce something that is normal to the certain group.
Human biomedical research brings up many complex questions. There are many examples of scandals referring to the experiments on human in developing and underdeveloped countries; on human who were forced by authorities to put themselves under the experimental conditions; on human who did not know that they were taking part in the experiment and who were provided with an inappropriate treatment. For example, the research aimed to find cheap and reliable treatment for pregnant HIV-infected women so they could give birth to healthy non-infected children was conducted in Africa. There were two groups of infected women: those who were given the experimental treatment and those who were given a placebo (“Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine” par. 20). The women did not know what group they were in. The other case presents the testing of military protective clothing when a young soldier was forced by the authority to stay inside the chamber where the experiment was conducted. That resulted in a heavy poisoning (“Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine” par. 2). The other big issue, of course, is holding experiments and application of stem cells, extracted from human embryos. It is not to mention animal testing practice yet widely applied all over the world.
In my opinion, it is hard to give the correct answer that can be undoubtedly applied to all cases of human bioengineering research. The majority of researches are aimed to improve the lifestyle of suffering people, to bring fast and easy recovering, to provide a patient with considerable assurance that he or she will heal up. Nevertheless, the means of it should definitely be within the moral and ethical norms of modern civilized society. No double standards should be applied. Especially in the researches, dealing with other, poorer nations and people of countries where the respect for human rights is not that high. Of course all the required permissions should be gained and the people who take part in the research should be fully provided with all the important information on risks and give their personal permission on taking part in the experiment.
Morals and ethical aspects are very important issues in the biomedical engineering research today. All the questions dealing with general morality should be considered before a research, or an experiment is conducted.
Works Cited
Dictionary.com 2015. Web.
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: Human Experimentation: An Introduction to the Ethical Issues. n.d. Web. 2015.