We Have a Prejudice Against Ourselves: Sentiment, Ethics, and Reason
Creator
Rosenberg, Leo T.
Bibliographic Citation
Journal of Medical Humanities. 1993 Spring; 14(1): 5-14.
Abstract
Briefly stated my point is that the well-being of each person in a community conceived abstractly may be all too easily sacrificed for the sake of the abstraction. Physicians may offer critically ill patients places in programs of experimental treatment, but there is commonly a catch to the offer. To take part in a program of clinical experiment a patient must not only risk a possible failure of a fresh drug and the chance of destructive side effects from the drug, but the patients must risk only getting the traditional treatment along with a placebo rather than the experimental drug. Placebo control, double blind critical protocols for testing effects of fresh drugs on critically ill patients are a commonplace. I question the scientific objectivity of the protocols and the underlying ethic, and suggest use of alternate protocols. Experimental tests in the treatment of gram-negative bacteria blood infections, muscular dystrophy, and AIDS and AIDS-related diseases are examples.
Date
1993Subject
Adults; Aids; Blood; Caring; Children; Common Good; Control Groups; Critically Ill; Drug Industry; Drugs; Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy; Ethics; Human Experimentation; Industry; Investigational Drugs; Life; Mortality; Patients; Physicians; Placebos; Random Selection; Research; Research Design; Research Subjects; Risk; Therapeutic Research; Value of Life;
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We Have a Prejudice Against Ourselves: Sentiment, Ethics, and Reason
Rosenberg, Leo T. (1993-03)