TITLE:
Freedom from Unwarranted Experimentation
AUTHORS:
Curt Devlin
KEYWORDS:
Unwarranted Experimentation, Human, Rights, Research, Nuremberg Code, Facebook, Tobacco, Wind Energy
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.5 No.5,
May
9,
2017
ABSTRACT: This is a declaration of
the fundamental human right of all people, simply by virtue of being human, to
be free from subjection to all forms of experimentation unless they voluntarily
consent to participate after being fully informed of all risks by qualified
experts in all relevant fields. Further, it asserts that everyone retains the
right to opt out of any experiment, each of their own accord, and at any time,
even after consent has been freely given and the experiment is underway. This
paper argues for the urgent need to broadly expand the definition of human
research in order to extend protections against illicit experimentation far
beyond the boundaries of formal medical and scientific research; to recognize
the full scope of ethical principles embodied in the Nuremberg Code of 1947;
and, ultimately, to enact these protections into law. In support of these
contentions, three primary examples have been chosen to illustrate recent and
widespread violations of these fundamental rights. Examples have been chosen
from social media, the tobacco industry, and wind energy production precisely
because they fall well outside this boundary of formal human research as conventionally
defined, and they demonstrate the need for wider protections in all walks of
life, as a fundamental dictate of social justice.