Summary Of Hope And Exploitation Martin

In the article “Hope and Exploitation”, Adrienne Martin explores how hope can make a patient more vulnerable to exploitation in clinical trials. Martin argues that three components of hope makes a participant more inclined to participate in a research study. In this article, Martin highlights some practical steps that can be taken by researchers to combat possible exploitative practices. First, I will identify and explain the three main components of hope as Martin emphasized. Next, I will explain the ways in which hope makes patients vulnerable to exploitation without deception in terms of therapeutic misconception and deliberation. Additionally, I will explain one practical step that researchers should do to combat exploitation. Finally,
As Martin pointed out earlier, hope plays a framing role in our decision making. Martin argues that hope alters a person’s decisions. She states that hope, “...can function as informational filters...as modes of interpretation...and as weighting schemes” (Martin 51). In other words, hope creates an informational filter which works to determine what reasons are best suitable for consideration in the patient’s actions. Additionally, hope generates modes of interpretation which interprets the gravity of events and how they apply to a person’s life. Finally, hope plays a role in weighting schemes and aids in determining the significance of each reason for acting. In terms of a patient, hope would frame only positive reasons for acting such as a possible cure. Hope would also push a patient to enter a trail and misinterpret health changes as the ‘treatment’ working. Lastly, it would encourage a person to see more of the benefits, like living a longer disease-free live over the possible side effects that the trial could cause. This changes in reasoning would lead to therapeutic misconception. There is some debates on what this means but for the most part to common consent is “... often understood as the conflation by research subjects between the goals of research and those of medical care” ( Melo-Martin & Ho 202). What this means is that trial participants misunderstand the goals of the research and belief that they correspond to those of medical care. In other words, they think the research is aimed at administering treatment instead of trying to collect data for research. They misunderstand that clinical trials “....aims at answering a scientific question in order to provide generalisable knowledge that can help future patients” (Melo-Martin & Ho 202). Instead, these patients believe that they are getting treatment to cure their disease. Hope alters a person’s deliberation for