One major ethical issue that occured in the field of Psychology happened with the case of David Reimer. This case had several ethical concerns involved, and was very unethical.
In this case, there were two twin boys born. However, once they reached eight months old, they needed an operation, in which for one of the boys went terribly wrong. Due to a sexual organ of his being completely destroyed by a risky way to perform the surgery, they decided to grow the baby up as a girl instead.They did this as a study to truly test the theories of nature vs nurture. The study was proven to be successful until David reached an older age and began to act more and more like a male rather than a female, and while he was younger he was always more tomboy-ish than a normal girl would be. In addition to simply this seeming extremely unethical, it was also stated by both of the brothers that while they were younger and still being observed by the psychologist John Money, that the psychologist had done innapropriate things to them and forced them to do inappropriate things to each other.
The ethical concerns within this case are pretty clear to see. One ethical conern is the choice being made for David to study on him whether or not he would successfully identify with being a female or not. This was unethical as he was born a male, and other people harmed him in a way in that he could have had problems completely identifying with the opposite gender, which evidentely, effected both him and others majorly later on in life. He became depressed, had issues within his marriage, and eventually commited suicide. His twin brother also committed suicide a few years before David. Another major ethical concern was how the psychologist treated the children. The way in which he did inappropriate things with the children was extremely unethical, and negatively impacted the chilfren.
I feel this study was one of the most unethical studies done of all time. They changed the gender of an infant to simply attempt to find the result of a study. The lasting impact this study could have had on the child was not fully contemplated and as a result, impacted the lives of several in a very negative way.
0 comments:
Post a Comment