Ethical Issues in Healthcare Research Essay Example

There are many ethical issues in the healthcare field. These issues range from insurance coverage, senior care, childhood immunizations, beneficence, abortion, medicinal marijuana, honesty and medical research (Fritzsche, D., 2004). Today we will discuss the ethical concerns in only one aspect of heath care and that topic is research (Benatar, S., 2000). Medical research is necessary in order to make strides in health care, introduce new medications, to discover new symptoms and disorders and to test new treatment options for current medical problems. Students of medicine, universities and pharmaceutical companies conduct this research primarily. Much of this research is time consuming and costly, therefore obtaining funding is not always an easy task. The funding issues have because many researchers to cut as many corners as possible when conducting research and trials. In order to save money clinical research and trials are conducted on low-income citizens from developing countries. Funding issues is only one of the reasons much of this research had shifted to developing counties, another reason is the ethical and legal guidelines are more lenient in developing countries then in developed countries.
The ethical dilemma we are facing is the fact that this research is being tested on individuals that have less money therefore risk their health in order to make money to support themselves or their families. Additionally because there is a much more lenient regulations in these countries informed consent is a big issue. Even if these people are completely informed of the risks they are taking their social standing and financial disadvantage leads them to make risky decisions based on desperation and the need to survive (Benatar, S., 2000). Researchers are targeting individuals they know are suffering and without some help will have a high risk of starvation, medical complications and even death. To a person looking at these terrible likely scenarios the