Nearly all of my student papers on the Lack's story implied that we have made progress and this could never happen in our day.
Check on this story from the 1990's about lead dust and children. It has all the same issues: families did not know what the danger of participating in the study was, poor black subjects, lack of medical treatment, and guess which medical institution in Baltimore is named in the suit. The Maryland Court of Appeals compared this study to the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/us/suit-accuses-baltimore-institute-of-exposing-children-to-lead.html
Can you find other examples of this. You may be very surprised with what you find. We must become aware of what goes on in our world today. Awareness gives us power to make a difference and then we can bring change. Post an article that you find that is similair to our book and this article above. Comment on what you think we need to do in our communication to be sure things like this are no longer allowed to happen.
I look forward to your comments.
~m
Source: http://bangordailynews.com/2011/06/14/news/bangor/jury-awards-widow-6-7-million-in-medical-malpractice-lawsuit/
ReplyDeleteIn this story, a man was severely injured following an ATV accident that occurred two nights before his 44th birthday. He was promptly flown to the hospital where he was cared for by a team of ER doctors. A CT scan showed that he had broken ribs and internal bleeding. The issue here is, the doctors who cared for him didn't let him know that he had internal bleeding that could persist and lead to complications. They should have let a radiologist know that they need to keep an eye on his bleeding.
This man ended up dying on his birthday of a heart attack. This is something that could have easily been avoided had the doctors communicated with the patient and their peers effectively. All they had to do was drain his collapsed lung in order to maintain a solid pressure equilibrium. Something as simple as informing someone of a crucial situation rather than failing to communicate could have prevented the loss of a life and several jobs. Keeping people in the dark about a scenario as severe as this is directly the doctors fault. I don't think negligence of patients is standard medical procedure.
I think this happened because of an error on the delivering/receiving ends of the communication line. Doctors are running around frequently, trying to figure out the proper steps to take amidst the chaos, and someone forgot or misheard one thing. In the heat of the moment it may have seemed insignificant but, it is the entire teams responsibility to make sure everyone understands what has been said, and what plan of action they must take to resolve the problem. The main thing that I could highlight that needs to be done in this type of workplace would be to slow down the communication process and double-check. You never know when that one tiny detail you never said, will change your life forever.
Source: http://www.cerebral-palsy-injury.com/hospital-negligence-lawsuit.html
ReplyDeleteAnybody practicing a career in the medical field should know, just out of common sense, that any mistake, is unacceptable. Yes, mistakes do happen, but if it is an avoidable mistake then it is more than wrong. In this case, the mistake was very avoidable. A child is now severely brain damaged, and now suffers from cerebal palsy due to a huge mistake of miscommunication.
Doctors knew that the child being born was too big to be born naturally through the birth canal, but nothing was told to anyone, not even the mother or the father of the child. The baby was 9 pounds, and 6 ounces. "Evaluations conducted by Dr. Reinaldo Sanchez and midwife Lowry Simpson -- who were working Oct. 1 -- should have indicated that the fetus was too big to move through birth canal, Zelikovic said." The child, during birth, got stuck in the birth canal for approximately three minutes, causing severe brain damage. Because medical studies were not informed at appropriate times, a new life, a human being now has to suffer from cerebal palsy for the rest of their life. He is now 4 years old, and cannot speak, or walk.
"The child will probably have a normal life expectancy, bat he'll never be independent," Zelikovic said." This is obviously an excuse simply to compensate for the horrid mistake the hospital has made. Any doctor or medical practitioner must be a responsible communicator in order for such huge mistakes to be averted.
source http://the420times.com/2011/08/california-hospital-accused-of-denying-medical-treatment-to-legal-mmj-patients/
ReplyDeleteFor the lead poisoning article, communication is a big issue. These children were getting lead poisoning and getting sicker and sicker and no one was helping them. They also didn't tell the families that their blood tests were coming back with more amounts of lead in them. This shows how communication between doctors and patients/patients families is huge. Managers and higher positioned people need to communicate better with doctors and patients to make sure this doesn't happen.
For my article, I found a controversial article where David Fielder talks about how Dr. Rafael Rosado is refusing care to medical marijuana users. Dr. Rosado thinks the MMJ users are just a step away from being junkies, and that they don’t deserve treatment. Such patients include a retired veteran, a 68-year-old man with a brain tumor, and 45-year-old woman with scoliosis and degenerative disc disease. This doctor is using his own prejudices to refuse care to people who have prescriptions from doctors. He should be fired and not allowed to practice because he is refusing care based off of his own beliefs and is judging them all.
This relates to Henrietta Lacks and the article above because they all deal with refusal of care. They also all deal with prejudice and judging based off different factors. For the book and your article race, but in my article they were judged off ways of treatment. Today, these things should never happen and we need to communicate better to prevent them. If higher positioned people oversaw doctors more closely, maybe this wouldn't happen as much. Or if people saw this happening they would need to communicate and report it as soon as possible. One of these ways of communicating should help these situations from not happening again.
http://listverse.com/2008/09/07/top-10-unethical-psychological-experiments/
ReplyDeleteThe following is a list of the ten most infamous unethical research experiments. Some of them may be disturbing so take caution in reading them. They are similar too Henrietta's story and the story given above not just because of the unethical practices and harmful effects but because of the lack of imformation given to the patient. Although intentional in some cases, information was with held from the people taking place in the experiments. This is a result as a breakdown of communication, in the last article on the list the parents of the child did not know that the child was even in an experimental process.
Another ethical similarity between the list of unethical experiments and the article above is that although the cruelty of the experients are real the results can still be used in a positive manner. For example the "Little Albert" experiment that showed the correlation between fear created with a stimulus and response is actually referenced to in my Developmental Psychology textbook. The test was cruel and had lasting affects on the child involved but the results are still used and reference too. That brings the question of what is the cost of scientific development? The story of the lead poisoning did bring forth usable information that may help lives but does that reality make it okay that some lives were harmed? I believe that it isnt okay, but the answer is a little more ambigous then a yes or no. Is a couple of lives fair sacrafice for the greater good?
Too prevent disasters like these unethical experiments from happening I think it is important to protray very detailed explanations of what the experiment entitles. I believe that a full understanding in even the possibility of danger might help correct these issues from happening
Tim,
ReplyDeleteYour last sentence is very powerful and very true. I read that last sentence and said to myself "that is so true". Nobody realizes it, but its the little things that truly matter the most. Without the little things, the whole picture ends up misinterpreted causing major mistakes. Just like when we did the telephone game in class. Small information was forgotten and it led from one thing to something comletely different. So I completely agree with you, good job!
http://www.oddee.com/item_96576.aspx
ReplyDeleteThe article above shows that doctors and surgeons make ridiculous judgements all the time. Im not saying that it justifies what happened to the children in the article but, it is very common still that people are mistreated. In the article it talks about how peoples' lives were put in danger or even killed because of a bone headed call by a doctor. One girl was even given the wrong heart and lungs during a transplant and was killed because of it.
In the article where the children were purposely put in danger by being exposed to excessive amounts of lead dust, the doctors knew that they were causing potential health issues. They knew that what they were doing was wrong. I would never be able to do that, especially to children. They have their whole lives ahead of them. Why ruin all of their potential with possible health problems.
In my article, the doctors just weren't thinking straight and didn't really understand the possible repercussions. It's very unfortunate what happened to the people and they can never recover from what happened. I think that the doctors that were involved should definitely be punished. No excuse can make up for what any of them did. There was obvious lack of communication especially when the doctors performed open heart surgery on the wrong patient. It's understandable that hospitals get very busy and information is easily misunderstood. However, the doctors should have double checked and made sure they were performing the right surgery on the patient.
Patients enter the operating room with no control over what will happen to them. They instill all of their trust in their surgeon. As someone who holds all this trust and has so much responsibility, the surgeon needs to make sure they are doing everything in their power to make sure they do the best job possible. If it means that they need to slow things down to double check then so be it. Americans move too fast anyways. I think if we weren't always rushing and in so much of a hurry, communication would be so much easier.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttp://farmingtonhills.injuryboard.com/medical-malpractice/medical-errors-still-on-the-rise-take-action-by-supporting-people-over-profits.aspx?googleid=294338
ReplyDeleteThe article I found is somewhat close to the book and the article posted on the blog. I focused mainly on the Alameda Hospital. It has the same idea that many things are not being communicated and are causing problems including death. Even with charts and multiple people signing off on certain information there are still multiple screw ups. Is there a way to help this? Patients already need to sign off and give permission of what treatment they are about to be given. When they don’t know what’s happening to them it is even worse. I had thought laws were passed against this. Ways to make patients have more of an idea of what is going on could be making them sign multiple times and if possible once each day before the procedure. Doctors need to spend more time with patients making sure they could write an essay about what is going to happen with them. Yet, we still need to keep in mind that accidents happen. There is no way to improve communication between the patient and the doctor if the doctor does not put forth the effort to tell the patient what is going on.
http://digitaljournal.com/article/188015
ReplyDeleteThis article is saying that the doctors can do the research because the patients are unconscious. And that there wouldn't be enough time to talk to a family member to find out if the research is all right. This is just an excuse, their way of justifying research done on people without their consent. I don't think that's right. Doctors and researchers shouldn't be able to experiment and play with people's lives. They deserve to live too.
I'm sure doctors wouldn't allow this to happen to them, but of course it's all right to do it to someone else.
Doctors should talk to patient's family members if they're present, find out if its all right to do research on the patient. If its a life or death situation that needs to be taken care of right now, then they should just not do it.
http://www.rbs2.com/humres.htm#anchor494157
ReplyDeleteIn this article there are many Nonconsensual human experiments that are occurring throughout the world that relate to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and are very similar in every aspect of the experimentation and danger it has behind it. Experimentation on human being is unacceptable unless the patient agrees to be experimented on. Being a Doctor give you the right to save people and help people stay healthy and alive and when a doctor cause problems in a person’s life from experimentation it is unacceptable and shouldn’t be tolerated. A mistake may occur during a process, but when the mistake can be avoidable it shouldn’t be a problem.
An example of a patient being operated on without consent is the Cincinnati Radiation Experiments. These experiments were thought to be helping the patients cure their cancer, but the doctors knew they were only experimenting on the patients while the patient thought they were receiving treatments. This article relates to Henrietta Lacks because both Henrietta and these patients were being experimented on without consent and both experiment are very wrong and shouldn’t have occurred. The biggest questioned that hung around throughout the years was “Why was this experiment begun and continued?” which was brought up about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and basically applies to all studies that were applied with no consent.
http://freedomofinformation.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/report-says-cia-conducted-illegal-medical-experiments/
ReplyDeleteThis article is about the CIA supposedly conducting illegal medical treatments to possible terror suspects. They would do things like test how long they could go without sleep and various other activities. This relates to the book we read in that it deals with certain things being done without consent and any notification of what was happening. Communication is a big element that is missing.
This situation could have been prevented with the overall aspect of communication. The way we prevent it from happening today is monitor many activities and be open to all possibilities of what kind of testing is going on. The people conducting the test have no information about the people they are testing on to really even know if they are real terrorists. Communication could be a life saver when further preventing this from happening in the future.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-22-4081877581_x.htm
ReplyDeleteThis article is about a man from New York who stole body parts from corps. In the article it states that "The parts were sold and used in about 10,000 surgical procedures performed by unsuspecting doctors in the U.S. and Canada." also it states that "Skin, bones, tendons and other parts- some of them diseased- were sold around the country for dental implants, knee and hip replacements and other procedures. "
It is tough to state what we need to do in our communication to be sure things like this are no longer allowed or happen. In many cases, thing like this happen by people we trust, people working with the dead bodies before a funeral, or even doctors in some cases. There are also many situations where bodies were dug up and stolen from their grave sights.
There is only so much we can do on our part. There will always be people out there with no human dignity or human decency, people who don't care about harming others. Thankfully the men involved in this crime were caught and put in jail but to be one hundred percent honest, I'm not sure what we can do to change this completely.
Communication does have a big role in this article though. The families of these corps have no idea what is going on. The families are being disrespected as well as this man takes apart their family members bodies, and uses and sells them. It's actually sickening to think that someone could do such things and not feel guilty. It relates to the Henrietta Lacks a lot due to the fact that the family is oblivious to what is going on, until the people are actually caught. Although it doesn't have to do with the race issue that is in both the article and the book, there are many other similarities. I never really thought much about how many instances we have like Henrietta Lack's in todays society. It's actually quite frightening!!
Laura,
ReplyDeleteI also read the “Top 10 Evil Human Experiments.” and was going to use the same article! I couldn't agree more that these articles relate a lot! Especially the one on "Tuskegee syphilis study, in which illiterate African American men were taken advantage of for the advancement of science. They were told they had “bad blood,” rather than telling them that they actually had syphilis. " You choose a great example. I like how you found one that was so much like the Henrietta Lacks story! I also like everyone else's examples. As I stated in my first comment. It is really scary to see all of these different examples of how such situations still exist today. That with such a past we still haven't corrected such things.
Beth,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article you choose I notice that you pulled out some really good points involving Doctors and informed consent. I do believe that informed consent is really valuable to our society and humanity. The experiments that they wish to test are good and benefical but the fact that they want to do them without consent is unethical and wrong. If they asked for consent before hand and if an accident did insue and they went ahead with those measures it would be fine.
Sydney G,
ReplyDeleteThe points that you brough out involving human ethics in experiments are very true. Some of the things you said made a lot sense like when they referred to homesexuality as a disease. This shows that even some of the smartest people in the world still lack knowledge in certain areas. These doctors misunderstandings and cruel nature destroyed many lives.
Teagan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said about surgeons and Americans in general. I think our society is so concerned about getting the task at hand done quickly, that most of us forget entirely about the accuracy that is aimed for. Getting it done as fast as possible is not getting it done, getting the job done right is when something is actually complete.
When reading the article about lead poisoning in children there is one quote from Dr. Gary W. Goldstein that particularly bothered me. His statement was “research was conducted in the best interest of all the children enrolled.” I don’t understand how Goldstein could bring himself to say such a statement. How can he think that putting these children in dangerous experiments with lead was for their best interest? Let’s reverse the rolls and say Goldstein had two kids. If this experiment was in the kids best interest would he have had his children involved? I don’t think so. If the treatment is a study or experiment there is no way to say it is in the best interest because they results of “experiments” and “studies” are unpredictable and uncertain.
ReplyDeletesource: http://listverse.com/2008/03/14/top-10-evil-human-experiments/
The experiment that I found is one that was conducted in Iowa in 1939. The experiment was called the monster study and it was conducted by Wendell Johnson. He took 22 orphan children and used them as psychological experiments. He split the group in half and gave some of them positive speech therapy and the other half were belittled and received bad therapy. The group of children that received the bad therapy retained speech problems and psychological issues. Johnson was a professor at the university of Iowa which just makes this story worse. He was using his terrible experiment and teaching his students about the results he got. He even tried getting one of his students involved in the experiment but being she had more dignity she refused.
This story just made me feel upset and mad. I don’t understand who some of these people think they are that! they can’t just experiment on people against their knowledge or will. Communication in this situation was terrible. If any of the students would have stood up to the teacher and reported what was happening those poor children wouldn’t have had to suffer the way they did. Although because everyone failed to communicate properly the experiment was finished and kept hidden until 2001 when somehow the college found out and then they issued a public apology and Mr. Johnson was fired. So at the beginning of this story the communication was terrible! But, in the end once the college found out I think they did a good job explaining the situation to the public and apologizing for what had happened.
In a lot of the stories I read there was a lot of experimentation done on orphan children. I makes me sick and I wish there was something we could do to bring it to a stop. For now the only thing we as individuals can do is communicate about it and bring it to the public’s attention when it happens and try to keep awareness of it.
Natalie,
ReplyDeleteI really like how you pointed out that there will always be those people who steal and disrespect. That made me think of whether or not they think its wrong. They technically are helping out others, but not really doing it in a right way. Do people that steal or doctors that take a biopsy without permission, know its wrong?
Kelsey-
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. Dr. Rafael Rosado should be fired. He doesn't have that right as a doctor to refuse someone care just because he thinks "they don't deserve treatment." Thats not a good enough excuse. They want help. They should be getting it. Obviously they need it.
Brooke,
ReplyDeleteYour article is terribly sad and I totally agree with you! How could someone do something like that?! I also agree that the communication got better throughout, but still something needs to change in our communication.
Source:http://www.naturalnews.com/019189.html
ReplyDeleteThis is the specific passage which really drew my attention to the horrors in our medical system:
"In a study published in Pediatrics, researchers at the University of California's Department of Pediatrics use 113 newborns ranging in age from one hour to three days old in a series of experiments used to study changes in blood pressure and blood flow. In one study, doctors insert a catheter through the newborns' umbilical arteries and into their aortas and then immerse the newborns' feet in ice water while recording aortic pressure. In another experiment, doctors strap 50 newborns to a circumcision board, tilt the table so that all the blood rushes to their heads and then measure their blood pressure (Goliszek)."
I not only found this as proof that the medical system is of little benefit to the mass populous, but also how many scientists and doctors don't see patients as humans, just a subject that draws in a paycheck. I'm very biased about the medical system, but any sane person can see how experimenting so inhumanely on infants only hours old is disgusting. These are the people that I hate, and I don't feel ashamed to admit it. These people are not dedicated to changing our society for the better. They can justify it any way they want, but realistically, they're testing without consent of the patient. According to the law, infants are humans, and therefore, they have basic human rights.
These doctors need a serious lesson in consent and the law and repercussions for violators. If the medical system would spend more time training doctors to be caring professionals instead of money making politicians, maybe we would have less fatalities in hospitals, less mental incapacities as a result of human experimentation, and more efforts to cure cancer, AIDS, and other preventable diseases.
Tim,
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunate that doctors can't even do something as simple as informing a colleage and patient about the exent of the damage. I agree that it shouldn't be standard medical procedure, but unfortunately, I think that this lack of communication is commonly practiced in the good US of A. It's sad that this man had to die because of the fault of the doctors, but it's worse that he died on his birthday when he had so many more years to live, especially when the entire situation should have been avoided.
Brooke,
ReplyDeleteI could not agree more. If Dr. Gary W. Goldstein had to put his kids into that situation, we all know that he would not be so thrilled. He definitely knew that what he was doing was wrong. I also really liked what you said in your last sentence, studies are very much unpredictable thats why they get studied. He shouldn't have been so certain about an uncertain topic.