(Written 16th of October, 2002)
Unethical drug and medical research on humans
- This writing keeps inside only a small part of all the things that has been made in the name of science. Some of the topics concern the modern western medicine, the one you and I have to rely when we get ill. Some of the topics on the other hand, concern drug and medical research that has been done outside of western countries, although western drug industry has been strongly involved in these researches. Additionally, in the history section, we will discover the long tradition of these unethical researches in the history of man.
- I would like to remind here, that all of the examples in this writing, concern mostly United States Of America and other countries, rather than Finland. However, I think it's crazy to think that Finnish drug industry don't do any unethical researches. Even if they don't, it doesn't really matter as these companies benefit from the researches done somewhere else and Finnish drug wholesale firms do sell drugs made outside of Finland.
- I chose this topic mainly because now days, drug companies are praised so much that everybody seems to think that they are the new God's. Many people simply ignore the cruel fact, that not all of the advancements come for free, in the field of drug research. Many times, these advancements aren't even achieved with ethical methods. People also seem to believe that using humans as guinea pigs, to objectionable researches, is something that ended when the Nazi-Germany was crushed and the prisoners from concentration camps were freed. Of course drug companies has to test their products on humans, at least to a certain point. But what about tests that I think are just waste of time and useless? If not even cruel.
- Researchers from the respected Yale, published in 1996 results of their research. What they researched, how they researched and most of all, to whom they performed their research, raises some issues and brings out the pattern, that is repeated over and over again in some modern medical research projects. Researchers from Yale, performed an test to eighteen schizophrenic that were living a stable life. In this test, these people suffering from serious mental disease, were given amphetamine so that they would develop psychotic episode again. May I ask what was the use of this? You would think that they could have find psychotic people from mental institutions, so that they wouldn't had to destroy eighteen peoples lives again? This seems to be the pattern in which these kind of researches are being made. They are done with people who can't defend themselves in a very good fashion or they can't clearly state what they want or don't want. And usually, they are done for no reason at all.
- This principle could be illustrated with a statement found from David J. Rothman's book: Strangers At The Bedside, that handles the history of medical research. In this book David J. Rothman makes the following statement: "First with animals, then with the orphans and after that with the retarded".
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