Microsoft Word research method fm doc

 
6.11 Ethical considerations 
Why do we need ethical approval? 
 
Before you embark on research with human subjects, you are likely to require ethical 
approval. You may wonder why all this bureaucracy is needed. But history shows us that 
prior to the development of ethical and human rights over the last 40 years, patients’ rights 
were often ignored and many individuals were seriously harmed by medical experimentation.
• Atrocities committed during World War II in the Nazi Germany which led to the 1947 
Nuremberg Code of Practice and in turn the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki 

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Research methodology 
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• Tuskegee Syphilis Study in USA (1932-1970s) to study the long-term effects of 
untreated syphilis- 400 men out of the 600 participants were never told about the 
infection and were never treated despite the fact that treatment became available
• A study to examine the natural progression of cervical carcinoma in New Zealand 
(1980s)-conventional treatment was withheld from women in trial and women were not 
asked for their consent 
Ethical decisions are based on three main approaches: duty, rights and goal-based. The 
goal-based approach assumes that we should try to produce the greatest possible balance of 
value over disvalue. Discomfort to one individual may be justified by the consequences for 
the society as a whole. According to the duty-based approach, your duty as a researcher is 
founded on your own moral principles. As a researcher, you will have a duty to yourself and 
to the individual who is participating in the research. So even if the outcome of the proposed 
research is for a good cause, if it involves the researcher lying or deceiving his subjects in 
some way, then this would be regarded as unethical. In the rights-based approach, the rights 
of the individual are assumed to be all-important, thus a subject’s right to refuse must be 
upheld whatever the consequences for the research.
Research studies should be judged ethically on three sets of criteria, namely: ethical