Читать книгу Social Work Research Methods - Reginald O. York - Страница 115

A concern for ethics in research emerge historically from a number of incidents of unethical behavior. One of the earliest examples in this country was the Tuskegee syphilis study that included a 40-year study of the effects of syphilis on the body of a group of poor African American men from Alabama in the 1930s (Reamer, 2010). These men were not given the standard treatment for syphilis so that the researchers could study the nature of the progression of the disease when untreated. They were also deceived about the nature of the experiment. Some, of course, died from the disease. Another example given by Reamer (2010) was an experiment (the Willowbrook study) where a group of retarded children were deliberately infected with hepatitis so that the trajectory of the disease when left untreated could be studied.

According to Reamer (2010), the first prominent regulation to prevent these abuses was enacted in the United States in 1966 when the surgeon general issued a directive that the Public Health Service would not fund research unless the procedures for the research would ensure that certain ethical principles were enacted. Documentation of these procedures were required. In social work, the Code of Ethics has become more specific with regard to principles related to ethical conduct in the use of human subjects in research.