the belmont principle of beneficence requires that

THE BELMONT PRINCIPLE OF BENEFICENCE REQUIRES THAT CODE

The American Psychological Association's principles were the first to recognize the principle of confidentiality. The committee charged with developing ethical standards for psychological research then developed principles that would guide the conduct of researchers when engaging in research that could pose ethical problems. Psychologists were asked to submit examples of research that they deemed unethical or of questionable ethicality.

The bases for these principles were critical incidents.

THE BELMONT PRINCIPLE OF BENEFICENCE REQUIRES THAT CODE

The first ethical code covering social and behavioral research was a set of 10 ethical principles adopted by the American Psychological Association in 1972. Its second principle, 'The design and performance of each experimental procedure involving human subjects should be clearly formulated in an experimental protocol which should be transmitted for consideration, comment and guidance to a specially appointed committee independent of the investigator and the sponsor.' established the concept of ethical review. should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.' This principle of 'free and informed consent' remains the basic foundation of ethical research with human participants.Īnother early code was the Helsinki Declaration, adopted by the World Medical Association at its meeting in Helsinki, Finland in 1964. Its first principle is 'The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.' The accompanying text made it clear that this voluntary consent should also be informed consent: '.the person involved. The Nuremberg Code of 1947 was the first international code of research ethics. Despite potentially important knowledge gained from such studies, the risks to the participants were extreme.Ĭodes of research ethics have been developed, in part to address the disregard for human safety and dignity that these research projects reflect. Army introduced severe stress to Army recruits by threatening them with death from errant artillery rounds or by causing the recruits to think that they, by making a mistake in wiring an instrument, had caused the injury or death of others in their units. Studies supported by the Human Resources Research Office of the U.S. The participants in Milgram's 'obedience' studies, conducted in the early 1960s, were told that they had to continue to participate in the study and shock another person at increasingly intense voltages. However, the wing housing the hepatitis program was willing to admit new clients if their parents agreed to allow their children to participate in the ongoing studies.īehavioral and social science researchers have exposed other humans to severe trauma and psychological stress in investigations of power. During the course of this study the institution closed its doors to new clients, claiming overcrowding. Between 19, children at the Willowbrook State School, a state school for 'mentally defective' youths, were purposely infected with the hepatitis virus in a study of that disease. The subjects were not asked for informed consent or told that they were being injected with live cancer cells. Doctors at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital conducted studies of human transplant rejection using cancer cells. These boys were fed forms of radioactive iron or calcium, sometimes in their milk, to enable the researchers to study the body's ability to digest minerals. In another example, researchers from Harvard and MIT formed a 'science club' of 19 mentally impaired boys at the Fernald State School between 19. The study only ended when a journalist broke the story of the study. Even after penicillin became available and was known to be effective in the treatment of syphilis in the 1950s, it was withheld from these subjects because the researchers were interested in the natural history of the disease.

These men were not asked for their informed consent to be in the study and they were, in fact, given misinformation about their participation.

American researchers from the Public Health Service studied 400 African American men with syphilis in the Tuskegee syphilis study between 19. The Nuremberg trials documented the unethical behavior of Nazi physicians, but there have been serious ethical lapses in the United States as well. Background for Development of Human Research Participants ProtectionsĮxamples of inhumane and unethical treatment of humans in the name of research have been documented throughout recent history.

The belmont principle of beneficence requires that