Ethical Views Of Little Albert And Milgram's Obedience Studies

Submitted By onetwothree456
Words: 508
Pages: 3

One of the subjects from the previous class that caught my attention was the section about research ethics. We touched on two different experiments that were run: Little Albert and Milgram’s Obedience studies. Now, it is thought that both studies were unethical to perform. As a person that is interested in the field of healthcare, ethics is a subject that interests me. An ethical issue was brought to my attention at my workplace about a week ago. I work as a microbiologist in a lab. We receive specimen everyday which we set up and do microbial testing for to find out what kind of bacteria the patient has and furthermore the antibiotics and dosage of the antibiotics the doctor can use to treat the patient. The supervisor of the lab came to speak to me about how I was reporting my results. This person told me that unless it was this one specific bacterium, I should not report any other findings. If it was just normal flora, then I would have understood completely. But this person was asking me to ignore bacteria that were very strong/resistant and would not be able to be treated with normal antibiotics. He also wanted me to ignore results that would merit a patient to be isolated from other patients to reduce spread of that bacterium. I thought about this and kept thinking this was not an ethical decision to make. I decided to speak to my supervisor about this, and after being waived off I made another more serious decision. Similar to psychology’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) and APA guidelines, microbiology has guidelines to follow as well. In this state, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) is the source of the rules and regulations to follow. I, along with my lead microbiologist who also disagreed with our supervisor, called the IDPH laboratory to seek guidance. We explained the altercation and asked about the ethical solution.