Clinical Trials: Ethical or Deceptive - Essay Example

It tries to examine the ethical problems that occur with experiments and human subjects as well as whether the interests of the subject always prevail over the interest of science and society. We can define clinical trials as experiments performed with an aim of finding out how effective and safe a particular drug or device used in medical examinations is. These trials can be performed by either individual researchers or health organizations affiliated with the government, together with hospitals or universities.

There are three steps in clinical trials, all of which involve humans and hence the concern by the ethical committee as life is precious. Clinical trials involve the recruitment of several patients to be used as subjects. Normally, these subjects should not receive any payment although nowadays, some receive payment for taking part on the trials. The experimenters divide volunteers into groups including a control group, to which they administer a placebo in place of the drug. From a clinical trial, there maybe four results.

One is referred to as a positive trial result, which indicates that the novel mode of treatment will be of great benefit and is greater than the treatment that already exists. On the other hand, a clinical trial can turn out to be non-inferior, inconclusive or negative where the new treatment proves to be substandard to the current standard treatment (Robinson & Andrews, 2010). Several arguments have been raised concerning clinical trials. Questions like if clinical trials are ethical and if the trials are beneficial to the participants or they are just things researchers impose for their own benefit have come up over the years.

The most common issues involved during trials include the preparation of manuals as some do not prepare them as required and hence leads to complications during trials, registration of the trials, recruitment of the patients or subjects and issues to do with the