Explain Why The Government Should Regulate Research
Like all successful endeavors, science comes with risks. Although not exactly on the same scale of risk/reward as endeavors in economics, science runs the risk of having research become perverted by the greedy need of discovering information, no matter the cost. This is why governments should regulate research –to a point.
All governmental regulation should not be made in attempts to hold science at a standstill, but rather to allow it to develop in a way that does not harm its subjects. While there have been many research experiments that have been managed under ethically sensible manners, there others that put the need of science over the need of the individuals that are harmed.
An example of researchers exploiting subjects is the experiment conducted on starving aboriginal people without consent by bureaucrats of the Canadian government. When researchers found a starving community, instead of drawing attention to the people to draw in funds to better support them, the researchers decided to take the community as an opportunity for nutritional experiments.
This is especially disheartening, because not only did researchers conduct their experiment on an already vulnerable population, but they also “depressed levels of vitamin B1” in school children to create a baseline for their …show more content…
experiment. Yes, it is true that this was only a temporary suppression, but could have had a lasting effect on the children’s health.
Another infringement on the children’s health was removing dental care for fear that it would interfere with the data collected. This was during a time when the Canadian government was already cutting back benefits to these underdeveloped areas whose main source of income was a trade that was no longer profitable.
In addition to both purposely lowering the levels of vitamin B1and removing dental care, researchers also fed participating schools “special enriched flour” that was illegal in other parts of Canada for unknown reasons. Therefore, it should not have been given to the schoolchildren if it was deemed a form of unacceptable nutrition in other parts of Canada.
Some understandable aspects of this experiment were controlling which schools got additional supplemental nutrients. Although not particularly humane for the school not receiving additional nutrients, they are not any worse off than they were previously, and like all experiments a control is needed to compare how effective the methods of the research were.
Although it may see as limiting to some, having a base line of government regulations on scientific research will benefit future research by allowing potential participants to feel assured that they will be respected and treated ethically, decreasing the idea that scientist will poke and probe while causing pain.
Stricter regulations for working with children as test subjects should not be out of the question either since at young ages children do not fully understand the idea of consent. Parents of course should have the last word if they want to pull their child from a research experiment, but there should still be an attempt to have children comprehend what they are going
through.
All governmental regulation should not be made in attempts to hold science at a standstill, but rather to allow it to develop in a way that does not harm its subjects. While there have been many research experiments that have been managed under ethically sensible manners, there others that put the need of science over the need of the individuals that are harmed.
An example of researchers exploiting subjects is the experiment conducted on starving aboriginal people without consent by bureaucrats of the Canadian government. When researchers found a starving community, instead of drawing attention to the people to draw in funds to better support them, the researchers decided to take the community as an opportunity for nutritional experiments.
This is especially disheartening, because not only did researchers conduct their experiment on an already vulnerable population, but they also “depressed levels of vitamin B1” in school children to create a baseline for their …show more content…
experiment. Yes, it is true that this was only a temporary suppression, but could have had a lasting effect on the children’s health.
Another infringement on the children’s health was removing dental care for fear that it would interfere with the data collected. This was during a time when the Canadian government was already cutting back benefits to these underdeveloped areas whose main source of income was a trade that was no longer profitable.
In addition to both purposely lowering the levels of vitamin B1and removing dental care, researchers also fed participating schools “special enriched flour” that was illegal in other parts of Canada for unknown reasons. Therefore, it should not have been given to the schoolchildren if it was deemed a form of unacceptable nutrition in other parts of Canada.
Some understandable aspects of this experiment were controlling which schools got additional supplemental nutrients. Although not particularly humane for the school not receiving additional nutrients, they are not any worse off than they were previously, and like all experiments a control is needed to compare how effective the methods of the research were.
Although it may see as limiting to some, having a base line of government regulations on scientific research will benefit future research by allowing potential participants to feel assured that they will be respected and treated ethically, decreasing the idea that scientist will poke and probe while causing pain.
Stricter regulations for working with children as test subjects should not be out of the question either since at young ages children do not fully understand the idea of consent. Parents of course should have the last word if they want to pull their child from a research experiment, but there should still be an attempt to have children comprehend what they are going
through.