Are human experiments ever justified? Discuss using examples and details.

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Psychology

Are human experiments ever justified? Discuss using examples anddetails.

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Research involving humansubjects is littered with a history of scandal that often shapespeoples views of the ethics of research Often the earliest citedcase is English physician Edward Jenners development of thesmallpox vaccine in 1796 where he injected an eightyearold childwith the pus taken from a cowpox infection and then deliberatelyexposed her to an infected carrier of smallpoxAlthough Jenners experimentwas fortunately successful the method of exposing a child to adeadly disease in this way would undoubtedly nowadays be seen asunacceptable Perhaps the most notorious cases of unethicalresearch were revealed during the Nuremberg trials concerning Naziexperiments on concentration camp prisoners This researchincluded involuntary sterilisation inducing hypothermia andexposing subjects to diseases such as tuberculosisMustard gas burnsBalcerThere are also examples ofgovernmentrun research that took advantage of the vulnerability ofthe subjects to ensure their participation and which resulted inthe subjects experiencing severe harms such as the TuskegeeSyphilis trials or the UKrun Porton Down chemical experiments inwhich 11000 military personnel were exposed to mustard and nervegas between 1939 and 1989Human subjectsYet despite the litany offailures to maintain ethical standards in research these remainthe exceptions and a focus on scandals can seriously distort properdiscussion about research ethicsResearch See Answer

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