Ethics in medical research
So, I heard on the radio today that the ability to treat schizophrenia was much better than previously thought.I think that's nice, the ability to treat serious, debilitating illnesses.
At the same time, I recently started to read books about psychology, to educate and better understand myself. The book I wanted wasn't available in the library, so I started with another one, which started off with psychology and research, which was a bit too advanced, heavy.
Anyway, I set myself a goal of getting through the first section of that book, and now I have a what seems like lower-level book which I can read comfortably.
Anyway, this first book was about research within psychology, and one of the things I read was that it was often students in psychology that were eager research subjects. Another couple of things were double-blind studies (the research subject is unaware of research test) and a note about getting too eager in the service of research and being sent to jail.
It is nice and necessary that advances in sciences are made, but I recently heard of a person 30 years young that took her own life, and she was in some sort of treatment or had some institution available. And the examples of over-medication, suicide etc. in psychiatry are many.
If you have a serious mental illness, that hampers your ability to see what's right and wrong, who is it that makes sure a person's rights are protected? If you are well functioning enough to get to an advanced degree in psychology, where is your empathy and understanding of serious mental illness?
It's also nice that there are researchers and medical personnel, but where do all these problems (researcher's opportunities) come from?
[Permalink] [By morphex] [Health (Atom feed)] [25 Aug 11:26 Europe/Oslo]