Mock 16: Is it worth risking healthy lives for research?

[Guest Namgalsip]

Is it worth risking healthy lives, such as the lives of astronauts, for the sake of research?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited the subject heading to standardize them. -Ian

[Guest mtws]

History is thankful for the wise, but glorifies the brave.

 

They believed it acceptable to risk their own lives!

Or else they wouldn't have strapped in!

[Guest Namgalsip]

I guess in this last incident, I had somewhat of a personal stake. My team's research was on that shuttle and when it went down, I couldn't help but ask myself, "was it really worth it?", "did we really need this info?". Of course I would have rather never known the results of this research than risk 7 astronauts lives. Seeing their families hurts deeply but I guess you're right. They made the decision to take that risk and I guess, given the opportunity, I would have too.

 

Nams

[Guest Ian Wong]

I think the question here boils down to each individual, and whether they knew about all the risks, and yet still made the decision.

 

Your question has lots of relevance to a huge number of clinical research trials. If someone enrolls in a heart disease trial, and you could either start them on the "conventional therapy" which has a research-proven track record of reducing the incidence of MI's by 5% over a 20 year period, or in the "experimental group" which is an unknown quantity, then you are asking that patient to make an informed decision on joining that study.

 

If that person ends up in the experimental group, has an MI in 5 years time, you are left with the possibility that you might have been able to prevent that MI if you'd simply not put him/her in the clinical trial, and started them on the conventional therapy.

 

In fact, for a clinical trial to "succeed", in other words, to tell us that one therapy is superior to another, by definition there had to be people in the "inferior" therapy pool, and these people had more adverse outcomes than the "superior" pool.

 

In other words, people experienced significant morbidity and mortality (suffering or death) in order to find out that one therapy is better than another.

 

If people/patients are properly informed as to the risks/benefits of research, and by their own volition and without coercion still decide to enroll, then it is their decision, and in fact this is how (my opinion only) medical research evolves. Otherwise, we'd still be blood-letting and drilling holes in skulls to let the evil spirits out.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 4