Ethical Dilemma Paper

1. Succinctly name & summarize the ethical dilemma(s) in your group assignment. Include pertinent medical facts, the patient’s, family’s, or other stakeholder’s expressed preferences (to the extent known) and the contextual features of the clinical scenario for the patient/family/stakeholder(s). How did these interconnect? Which of these most influenced your decision-making and that of the group?
In this case, Laurie De Soto, a 16-year-old newly diagnosed leukemia patient, was presented with the opportunity of participating in a clinical trial. The Principal Investigator of the clinical trial was Dr. Elizabeth Holmes, Laurie’s pediatric oncologist. The primary purpose of the clinical trial was to determine whether the current standard four-drug
Identify and/or discuss the principles of ethics that apply to your case scenario. If one or more principles took precedence, explain how or why you made that determination.
In 1979, the Belmont Report created precautions to protect individuals participating in clinical research trials. The report provided three ethical principles to adhere to in regards to utilization of humans as research subjects. The three ethical principles are Justice, Autonomy, and Beneficence. Our group agree that these three principles of ethics apply to our case. Justice places an emphasis on equality. Especially in a situation of a clinical trial, balance and equality in the protocol play an important role in eliminating confounding aspects and bias to ensure that the results obtained are true solely to the factor that is being observed. If patients could choose which group they want to be a part of, they could potentially be introducing a confounding factor of the placebo effect. Thus, there is now the potential of the data collected being skewed and the research being jeopardized. Therefore, giving patients the opportunity to choose which research group to participate in, the validity of the scientific research is affected as the variable being observed is not isolated. No one would benefit from compromised research
My undergraduate studies had placed an emphasis on the importance research protocols with respect to the conclusion of the experiment. However, by the second meeting – everyone has had the opportunity to go over our discussions from the first meeting and we concluded that the integrity of the research trumps patient autonomy in this situation. We discussed that if there were differences and they persisted, it would be majority rule. Nevertheless, those with opposing ideas could work on the counter arguments of the presentation. That way, everyone’s input would be contributed to the final