Case Unit 5: Deniers and Ethics Flashcards
What is The Declaration of Helsinki?
A set of ethical principles regarding human experimentation developed by the world medical association
Not legally binding
What are ethics?
Standards of right and wrong
Continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs
What are the Nuremberg trials?
Trials held after WW2 to prosecute leaders of Nazi Germany, including those who performed medical experiments on people in prison camps
Led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code
What is the Tuskegee study?
Black male participants told they would receive treatment for syphilis
However treatment was actually withheld
Aim to see how syphilis develops
What is the Alder Hey tissue scandal?
Organs removed from children who had died and used for research
What is the Nuremberg code?
and 4 main points from it
Not legally binding
- Main point is voluntary consent
- Avoid unnecessary mental/physical suffering
- Degree of risk should not be more than humanitarian importance
- Subject can withdraw at any point
What is the Wakefield MMR study?
Published 1998 in The Lancet
Suggested link between MMR vaccine and autisms
Media propagated doubts about MMR
Less people got vaccinated
How did the Wakefield MMR study contravene ethical guidelines?
Patients were recruited via anti-vaccine groups
Did not declare that research was funded by solicitors trying to sue developers of the MMR vaccine
Did not declare that Andrew Wakefield was developing his own vaccine against measles
Data was manipulated - more children recorded to have had regressive autism than actually diagnosed
How could the Wakefield MMR study have been improved?
Conflicts of interest should have been declared
Participants should have been representative of population
What are the 7 requirements for ethical research?
Must have scientific value/usefulness Must have scientific validity (valid data) Fair selection of participants Good risk/benefit ratio Respect privacy of participants Informed consent Must undergo independent review
What is Karl Popper’s theory of falsification?
Science must be falsifiable
You must attempt to prove that a hypothesis is false
Pseudoscience is not falsifiable
What is the problem of induction?
Just because you have observed something one way many times, you cannot guarantee that it will continue to happen that way. You can support a hypothesis but cannot prove that it is true
