Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Clinical trials and Hippocritical oaths

We (group 3) addressed the immorality of doctors misinforming their patients in order to convince them to participate in clinical trials, or misleading them about the risks involved.
We all agreed that it is morally reprehensible and a flagrant violation of the hippocratic oath.  We could not even justify it trying to play devils advocate, The closest reason was using these practices to try and get a drug or procedure approved that was not particularly profitable but very helpful.  However, these practices would either make the trials show it was not useful, or cause the results to be falsified. One of which is counterproductive to the concept, the other is more unethical practices and causes question of the drug is really helpful.

In our agreement we shifted the conversation to the problem of profit.  How many potential "cures" never reach public use because the "treatment" is far more profitable than curing the individual.  We spoke on how companies are allowed to lobby and affect the laws of our country, and how that is probably not the thing we should be allowing as its people.

We also touched on genetics and both social and biological evolution and the paths we are taking as a species in both.

~Radiance

7 comments:

  1. The flawed system that allows pharm-companies to "treat" rather than "cure" has allowed greed into a scientific field that should be all about giving. I understand that it costs billions of dollars and many years to get a drug out to the market but that does not justify only making prescription drugs that are profitable. What is sad is that this allows drugs that can actually cure individuals to but brushed under the table, all because of its profitability. It seems that the government should be playing a larger role on regulating these profiteers. Why cant we cut a couple billion dollars from Military spending, or god forbid, lower the wages of our senators and representatives, and pour that money into University based research labs who can remove the business side of research and bring stability and honesty into a field that so desperately needs it.

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  3. I agree that the government should have a bigger role in this. Medical reasearch holds the life and death of so many people in its hands. Why is it not a bigger concern of the government and the media to monitor these practices and expose their unethicality? It's ironic that America is so afraid of terrorism, but pays so little regard to the nonviolent betrayal being done right under its nose. We can't move forward as a species if those who have the power to solve our biological issues are so overcome with a profit motive that they won't fight earnestly to create something capable of curing people.
    I can't even google this topic without coming up with page after page of health insurance controversies...I don't understand why the government is so concerned about everybody having access to health care benefits, but shows little concern for the improvement of health care itself, and the safety of people being blindly exposed to the consequnces of its research.

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  4. on an abstract level, being a doctor who is paid by the patient, rather than by some other benefactor (private agency or government institution) is merely exchanging one harm for another, and painting it as if it weren't is kind of disgusting. Helping people means helping people and nothing else, regardless of whether or not everything has a price. The inability to recognize this simple tenant of NECESSARILY TRUE logic very well could be the root cause of many problems within the healthcare industry.

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  5. I take issue with the conception of health as a market in the first place. Unlike commodities, such as trading cards, candies, or diamond rings, health is of significance to survival of the individual. Whereas rejecting an overpriced chocolate bar is a low-risk behavior, one cannot so easily reject extremely expensive heart surgery if one's very existence depends on it. Knowing this, prices in healthcare are increased against what seems to be no ceiling at all. Consumers", i.e. the dying, are incapable of affecting these prices, because any attempt at such endangers them. Thus, the standard arguments for laissez faire treatment of the economy are completely ineffectual here. Rather, healthcare would be more properly treated similarly to the fire department and police department - general services for the good of all.

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  6. It's sad, but when it comes down to it, our health is not the first priority for these companies. Money is their motive and as long as the contracts and waivers held by these companies are signed by their guinae pigs, they are free to use them however they want. There is no question that the outcomes of these experiments often times are more horrific than the starting points. Although physicians and pharmacutical companies know this, they are willing to take the risks involved as well as pay off the participants in hopes that the legal settlements they pay will pail in comparison to the profits they make from consumers. Ultimately, as consumers, we have to take personal responsiblity for the things that we allow to be done to us. Instead of looking at doctors as these God- like individuals who have the cures to what we need, we must realize that these people are simply humans who do not always know or care about our best interests.

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