[4772] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] In UK,
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (PRIVACY Forum mailing list)
Wed Aug 13 14:23:07 2014
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 11:02:45 -0700
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In UK, experimenting with heart attack victims without consent
Direct from the UK comes word of one of the more dubious medical
experiments I've heard of in some time, that should raise ethical red
flags around the world.
If you live in the Welsh, West Midlands, North East, South Central and
London Ambulance Service areas, and you take no action to opt-out from
a planned new University of Warwick study -- and you're unfortunate
enough to have a heart attack -- you may randomly find yourself
treated with a placebo rather than the conventional treatment of
adrenaline. If you die from your heart attack, researchers will not
actively seek out your relatives to inform them of how you were
treated.
Persons who happen to see advertisements about the study in those
areas and so learn of its existence can in theory opt-out --
otherwise, you're a lab rat whether you want to be or not.
Researchers have a legitimate question -- does adrenaline therapy in
these situations do more harm than good? Unfortunately, in their
attempt to avoid study bias, they have violated a basic informed
consent principle of ethical experimentation.
I suspect that this study stands a good chance of collapsing in the
light of publicity, and the litigation potential appears enormous even
for the UK. If nothing else, I would expect to see campaigns urging UK
residents in the affected areas to opt-out en masse.
I would opt-out if I lived there.
Sometimes ostensibly "good science" is unacceptably bad ethics.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
I am a consultant to Google -- I speak only for myself, not for them.
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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