Ethical Concerns with Research As Member of the Institutional Review Board - Human Subjects Committee - Essay Example

It is always important to adhere to ethical norms whenever carrying out a research on human beings. Adherence to norms will promote the researchers objectives and will eliminate errors which may lead to erroneous conclusions and recommendations. Research work done one human beings will entail a lot of togetherness during the research process. Such collaboration is not possible if all (participants and the researcher) are not on the same page. Collaboration will ensure accountability and responsiveness.

Research ethics demands that participants have necessary information before embarking on the research study. This is essential as it enables them to make an informed consent about their participation. The element of collaboration which leads to accountability comes into play since a stakeholders meeting has to be organized for a briefing. In this case, since it was aerial spraying of toxic substances over the city, schools and neighborhoods, it means that the locals were not informed whatsoever about the intention of the study, its importance/benefits and risks involved.

This also means that the element of honesty was not applied which translates to subjective analysis. Ethics in research further advocates for non-biasness, integrity and openness. In this case, this is not so since secret spraying of the community is evident. Openness and integrity means that justice for the participants is a priority. Another very key aspect in ethics is confidentiality assurance. Participants need to be assured of the confidentiality of the findings and that only findings across a group of participants should be made public.

Here is a case where even the participants have not been involved and are not assured of the confidential handling of the findings. Confidentiality in research study guarantees the participants of the researcher’s social responsibilities. This makes them aware of the social good and ways of mitigating social harms which may be as a result of the research process. This again goes back to informed consents before the onset of the research. The sprayed community has children, the elderly and other vulnerable persons which are not capable of making informed consents on research participation.

In such instances, the guardians are allowed to make informed consents on their behalf which was not the case here. All of them are lumped together, sprayed despite the fact that respect for participants should be a priority in any research. This research did not take into account the risks and benefits involved which should be made clear to the participants before the inset of the research. Ethics advocates for beneficence where the participant should be informed of the research participation benefits while at the same time making sure that the benefits are spread out and maximized while the risks are minimized.

The element of discrimination also came into play in this experiment. This is evident in the way the selection of the area to be sprayed was selected. In such undertaking, the researcher should ensure that all participants (read community) have an equal chance of being selected to participate. It appears in this case that the community was discriminated against and selected as the one to bear the consequences. The legality of the experiment is not assured since there is no Government in the world which can allow its citizens to be harmed intentionally externally of internally.

Further, it appears that the researchers have no requisite competence to carry out such an undertaking. In summary, as Shamoo and Resnik (2009) points out, when conducting research where the subjects are human beings, the researchers should always strive to minimize harms and risks involved and maximize on benefits (both actual and perceived). Further, he/she should endevour to respect and treat the subjects with dignity and assure them of their privacy and autonomy to participate without coercion.

He/she should ensure special precautions are taken into account while dealing with vulnerable populations. Lastly, the researcher should always strive for even distribution of the benefits and burdens involved in the research in a fair manner. Reference Shamoo, A. & Resnik, D. (2009). Responsible Conduct of Research. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.