Res 351 Week 2

RES 351 Week 2 Business Research Ethics

University of Phoenix

NAME

DATE

Professor:

Business Research Ethics

The article Unethical Guatemalan study may undermine recruitment; trust discussed the unethical research conducted by United States research groups on Guatemalans regarding STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases). A survey in Guatemala where the researchers substantially infected all of the Guatemalans with STDs was hosted by the United States Public Health System (USPHS) (AHC Media, 2010). During the 1940’s to 1960’s, researchers infect over 5,500 prisoners, soldiers, mental patients, and children with STDs such as gonorrhea, syphilis, and cancroid (Stein, 2010). The issue researchers had is that the participants were ordered not to release any information of this study through any means to anyone and were not informed of the scope, intention, and procedures of the research study (Stein, 2010).

Purpose of research

The true purpose of the research was to see if Penicillin would rid patients of the effects of the STD’s (Stein, 2010). This would be used as a strong marketing tool for the businesses and can eventually be very beneficial for companies. This research used the participant’s information for unintended purposes and posed another ethical problem. The initial research was to generate data to develop a conclusion on the hypothesis seeing if penicillin is able to avoid the maturity of STD’s in a male/female after sex, so participants were injected with the STD’s. On a human rights standpoint, grave unethical conduct was performed in the research such as infecting the helpless (mental patients, children, etc.) and using cruel means of having the participants behave with the research.

Affected/injured parties

The injured parties of this unethical business research were the Guatemalan

participants of psychopaths, convicts, children, and soldiers. Guatemala was a

“promising” site for the United States Public Health Service to conduct this...