Ethical Violations

After reading the passage, I realized a few ethical violations could be recognized. Before a study or research could be conducted, all participants should be informed on the purpose of the research, what procedures are involved, benefits of the research and any risks related to the research. In psychology, one of the professional codes of ethics is that all participants must consent to the research and must be debriefed. In the Guatemala study, female commercial sex workers were injected with diseases such as gonorrhea, chancroid, and syphilis without their prior knowledge and consent. Secondly, the soldiers and prison inmates were infected with the disease by having sex with the infected sex workers without knowledge of them being infected or being participants in a research. Additionally, when the researchers found out that the soldiers were infected by the female commercial sex workers, they changed their approach by infecting them with gonorrhea through inoculations into the urethra, skin injections of chancroid and syphilis and also exposing the foreskin of the penis to other infectious material. This is again was done without their consent, hence they were decepted. Another code of ethics is the protection of the client’s welfare. Human participants should not be infected or injected, or put in any harm. Researchers must ensure that participants taking part in a research must be protected from physical and mental harm. For example, participants should not be exposed to risks greater than or additional to those experienced in their everyday life. Hence, most researches are done with animals to include rats, guinea pigs and monkeys.
Other ethics are: 1. High levels of competence, integrity and responsibility 2. Respect for people’s rights to privacy, dignity, confidentiality and personal freedom 3. Protection of the clients welfare

When testing a new drug for blood pressure, you would learn more about its effectiveness from giving it to half of the participants in a group of 1000 than all 1000 participants because you must have an experimental group and a control group for it to be effective. In a experimental group, the subjects are exposed to the independent variable. In the control group, the subjects are exposed to all conditions except the independent variable. To determine if the drug is effective, the effects must be compared with the group that receives the actual drug and the group that receives a placebo. Hence, if blood pressure is low in the experimental group, then is could be confirmed that the drug was effective.
Internet Answer: To determine whether this drug is medically effective, we must compare its effect on those randomly assigned to recieve it with those who recieve a placebo. The only difference between the groups is whether they recieved the actual drug. So, if blood pressure is lower in the experiemental group, then we know that the drug itself has produced this effect, not just the participants' knowlege that they are being treated