Author Question: Both a subject in an experimental group who receives an experimental treatment and a subject in a ... (Read 212 times)

abern · **on:** Jul 8, 2018

Both a subject in an experimental group who receives an experimental treatment and a subject in a control group who receives a control treatment are considered to be subjects in therapeutic research. Why is this?

a. A patient in an experimental research study who elects to be a member of the experimental group knows he or she will be receiving the experimental treatment.
b. Each patient who is consented to be a research subject in an experimental study in which the treatment has potentially beneficial results has the potential to receive a therapeutic intervention.
c. The research is designed to measure the effect of the therapeutic treatment as compared with the usual therapeutic treatment; hence, this is therapeutic research.
d. Each subject is blind to treatment.

Question 2

In what way could the researchers in the Willowbrook study have designed their research on the hepatitis virus so that it was ethically acceptable?

a. The researchers could have given each participant a chance to assent.
b. The researchers could have performed their study on persons who were capable of full assent.
c. The researchers could have made the study available at many institutions for the mentally retarded.
d. The researchers could have performed descriptive research on persons already infected with hepatitis.

IRincones · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 8, 2018

Answer to Question 1

ANS: C
Therapeutic research gives the patient an opportunity to receive an experimental treatment that might have beneficial results. In experimental research this means only that the subject is recruited into the study and randomly assigned to either a treatment or control group, not that the subject receives the experimental treatment.

Answer to Question 2

ANS: D
From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, research on hepatitis was conducted by Dr. Krugman at Willowbrook, an institution for the mentally retarded. The subjects, all children, were deliberately infected with the hepatitis virus. During the 20-year study, Willowbrook closed its doors to new inmates because of overcrowded conditions. However, the research ward continued to admit new inmates. To gain their child's admission to the institution, the parents were forced to give permission for the child to be a subject in the study. Because, the principal of beneficence requires the researcher to do good and above all, do no harm, the only way to study a virus that clearly harms people is non-interventionally: through descriptive or correlational research.