The Ethics Of Fieldwork In The Belmont Report

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night” (Steve Martin). Charlie Gordon’s sunshine was being smart and fitting in, when he was offered the chance to be smart he would never begin to comprehend how it would affect his life for the better and the worse. He had doctors use unethical procedures on him, He had horrible pain and suffering, and he would eventually come to never see the bright sunny life that he had dreamed. In Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur made dirty, crooked, and some might even say unscrupulous decisions. Firstly, The doctors shouldn’t have chosen Charlie Gordon because they resisted in obeying the Ethics of Fieldwork in the Belmont Report. According to the Belmont Report,” the requirement to acknowledge autonomy and the requirement to protect those with diminished autonomy.” A person with an IQ of 68 has extremely diminished autonomy or intelligence. In the report it says to “Protect those with diminished autonomy.” Charlie was not protected from the harm the world has
Charlie Gordon found out that he would eventually decrease in Intelligence until he would slowly and painfully die. Charlie found out that he would die when he researched it himself and found that ,“Artificially increased intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase.” (Keyes 205) Yes, that confirms that he will die. Charlie also had to dissect his only friend to confirm his research,“Algernon died two days ago. Dissections show my predictions were right. His brain had decreased in weight and there was a general smoothing out of cerebral convolutions as well as deepening a broadening of brain fissures.” (Keyes 205) You could say he signed up for it and deserves to die. First of all you are a sickening human being and he wasn’t even told all of the drawbacks, once again going against the Ethics of