Distinguishing Ethical from Unethical Research on Human Subjects (Reaction Paper Sample)

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Distinguishing Ethical from Unethical Research on Human Subjects
The Tuskegee Syphilis Trials, the Porton Down Chemical experiments, and the Nazi concentration camps experiments are just a few of the well-documented examples of unethical research on human subjects in history. When experimenting on human subjects, researchers must balance science interests and those of their subjects, society, and future patients. This balance requires prioritizing subjects’ interests and protecting them from harm. Therefore, the difference between ethical and unethical research on human subjects is whether the research meets the standard safeguards of proper consent, anonymization of personal data, and protection from unnecessary risks.
Since the law and research guidelines are too generalized, researchers typically appoint research ethics committees (RECs) to define their operating ethical guidelines. These committees also protect those groups that are least able to protect themselves, such as children and disabled adults (Williams 106). In such cases, RECs ensure the research is ethical by not posing any real risk of harm. Instead, research should directly or therapeutically benefit its subjects. Williams (60) further highlights that although changes in the law, such as cancer trials, now permit children to be used as human subjects, researchers must still protect them from unethical research. For instance, a REC would have ascertained Edward Jenner did not inject an eight-year-old child with a cowpox infection while trying to cure smallpox (Bambery et al. 93). Ethical research protects subjects from such maleficence. Therefore, ethical research on human subjects entails protecting and shielding them from being unethically experimented on regardless of their handicap, age, gender, or race.
Overall, ethical and non-ethical research are distinguishable by adherence and non-adherence to research safeguards, guidelines, and principles, respective