Its Cas again: Today our group mainly discussed case 14 which was about whether or not it was moral to have pharmaceutical testing agencies in India where the majority of people are very poor.
I said no. lol. But allot of people pointed out that even though they didn't like it, they thought the tests needed to be done on someone. I felt like it was praying on the poor and pointed out that I thought rich people would volunteer for it it.... maybe in the name of "science". Some agreed but said that there would probably not be enough pure (not taking advantage) volunteers to make the research successful. .... and I reluctantly agreed.
We also talked about cloning... and how that might affect our communities socially. We didn't think it would be right to clone people for recreational reasons... and that the subject would definitely give cause for more laws to regulate how and when someone could be cloned. :)
We talked some about case 18, which was about how the genetic make up of some people whom were in the Gulf War, had been changed by something they were exposed too. We thought that this was cool... but didn't see very much implications of the subject into Bioethics.
to the point of topic 14 the question is are the pharm companies disclosing all the proper information or are they just taking advantage of subjects? as long as companies fully disclose everything it shouldn't matter where they want to do testing. scientists know that a large data set gives the most accurate results. if we just use small samples in America then we discard all the possible genetic variances that occur in the world. the human body is a huge chemistry set, why should we assume(wrongly) that every drug reacts the same in everyone-well at least at an LD49 or lower level.
ReplyDeleteOk, I already tried to post this once...so we'll see...
ReplyDeleteWith case 14: it is necessary to test new drugs, and testing requires volunteers. People most likely to volunteer are those who stand to benefit in some way, and are usually in one of two groups: those who are ill and have exhausted all other medical options, and those who are poor and stand to receive financial compensation for their participation. The ethical question here concerns testing on impoverished people. I think that this is such a difficult problem, because no answer is good for EVERYone. Either you test on the poor, and others benefit from their contribution to science; or you don't test on them, and by waiting to find cures you end up hurting people who might have benefited from those medications. I believe that the system we have now is about as close to right as we are going to get. This is only true, of course, if participants are given full disclosure on possible side-effects and risks (both short and long term), and relatively compensated.
I wasn't there for this discussion, but I did read the article and it seems that the unfortunate truth is that the companies put their test centers their because it is easier to avoid regulations. This is obviously a problem. A way that we could avoid problems like this could be if we put through legislation that required companies to adhere to our testing regulations in other countries, otherwise we won't use their products.
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