The case studies clearly show where medical ethics was not adhered to by the medical community. In the one study, a group of African-American men were told that they would receive treatment for syphilis. At the time the study began, they were not given the available treatments, which were not useful. However, the men were lied to with regards to what was being done to them. In the next decade, penicillin became available. This was an appropriate and effective treatment against syphilis. Still, the physicians lied to the men. They wanted to study the effects of untreated syphilis on the body. The men were not able to give informed consent since they were not told what was being done to them. In this case, respect for persons was violated. Respect for persons requires that all individuals be treated as autonomous. The men in this study were not. If they do not have full information and are not treated as autonomous, they cannot give informed consent (Belmont Report, 1979).

There are a number of things the researchers should have done in this situation. Firstly, they needed to be honest with the men. They needed to acknowledge that there were few treatment options available in the 1930s (when the study began). They needed to inform the men that they would use the available treatments, if the men wished. The men needed to be offered the treatments; autonomy would have allowed the men to decide. Furthermore, the men needed to be informed that they wanted to study the long term effects of an essentially incurable disease (in the 1930s). When the treatment became available in the 1940s, the men should have been offered it and encouraged to accept it (within the bounds of informed consent and patient autonomy). The longitudinal study could have continued; it would have allowed the researchers to determine the overall long-term effectiveness of a new drug. The men, though, needed to be made aware of all of these goals. The men needed to be made aware of the risk and the benefits of the treatment.

Another well-known case in which serious ethical violations occurred involved the use of patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital. The patients were injected with cancer cells; they were not told of this. Beneficence was violated in this case. Beneficence demands that patients be protected from harm. It is often summed up as “First, do no harm.” This is considered the most important concept in medicine. The researchers believed that they did not need to inform the patients. They believed that there was no risk to the experiment. Obviously, this is impossibly to state with certainty. Anything that is placed in the human body carries risks. Furthermore, there is no reason to inject a dangerous cell into the body. This also violated respect for persons, as the individuals were not informed of the experiment (Belmont Report, 1979).

This scientific study should have never occurred. If the researchers truly believed that there was no risk from the cells, they could have asked for volunteers. This is still potentially unethical, because it violates the risk/benefit idea. There would be no benefit for an individual to have cancerous cells injected into his or her body. However, there would be a risk. The most important thing in all research studies is for the research scientists to be completely honest with any potential subjects. This includes sharing all the risks and the potential benefits. It is also important for a researcher to be honest with himself or herself. The researcher must ask if the benefits of pursuing a research project are worth the potential risk to fellow human beings. If the answer is no, the study should be discarded. Furthermore, all research projects must be thoroughly vetted by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). As objective individuals, the IRB can make the final determination about the study and ensure the protection of the individuals. The researcher must give the IRB all data though; this still requires the researcher to demonstrate a high level of medical ethics.