Читать книгу Essentials of Sociology - George Ritzer - Страница 86

Ethics is concerned with issues of right and wrong, the choices that people make, and how people justify those choices (Hedgecoe 2016). World War II and the behavior of the Nazis helped make ethics a central issue in research. The Nazis engaged in horrendous medical experiments on inmates in concentration camps. Unethical research was also conducted between 1932 and 1972 at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama on hundreds of poor black American men suffering from syphilis. The researchers were interested in studying the natural progression of the disease over time, but they never told the participants that they were suffering from syphilis. Despite regular visits to collect data from and about the participants, the researchers did not treat them for the disease and allowed them to suffer over long periods of time before they died painfully (Reverby 2009).

A more recent example of questionable research ethics is the case of Henrietta Lacks (Skloot 2011; see also the 2017 HBO movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). Lacks was a poor African American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge or consent, some of her tumor was removed. Cancer cells from that tumor live on today and have spawned much research and even highly successful industries. While those cells have led to a variety of medical advances, a number of ethical issues are raised by what happened to Lacks and subsequently to her family. For example, should the tumor have been removed and its cancer cells reproduced without Lacks and her family knowing about, and approving of, what was intended? Would the same procedures have taken place if Lacks were a well-to-do white woman? Finally, should Lacks’s descendants get a portion of the earnings of the industries that have developed on the basis of her cancer cells?

Henrietta Lacks was responsible for major advances in medical science, all without her knowledge or consent. Cells taken during testing while she was undergoing treatment for cervical cancer in 1951 are still used today. Lacks’s cells continue to be invaluable to researchers, but should the manner in which they were obtained affect how they are used?

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No research undertaken by sociologists has caused anything like the kind of suffering and death experienced by the people studied in Nazi Germany or at Tuskegee Institute, or even generated an ethical firestorm like the one raging around the Lacks case. Nonetheless, such research is the context and background for ethical concerns about the harmful or negative effects of research on participants in sociological research (the code of ethics of the American Sociological Association can be found online at www.asanet.org/about/ethics.cfm). There are three main areas of concern: physical and psychological harm to participants, illegal acts by researchers, and deception and violation of participants’ trust.