The paper is more of a self review concerning the integration of faith into the daily happenings around us. It takes a Biblical dimension on explaining how people should treat one another and how these teachings of the Bible are contravened often by the scientists and the practical examples of such acts in the US histoiry
Faith Integration With Research
In Christianity, Bible is the key fundamental book and its teaching provides the principles and blueprint beliefs of ways to live as a Christian. The Ten Commandments on the Old Testament given to the Israelites to keep, gave them the pathway on how to live moral upright with God and fellow man. In the New Testament, Jesus summarized the commandments in two in Matthew 22:37-38, where he commanded us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind; as well as love our neighbor as we love ourselves. As Christians, love, honesty and integrity forms an integral part of our daily interaction with others, both in our work and living places. This is where our Christianity becomes questionable, if one lacks to practice these virtues with the others.
Carrying each other's burden as indicated in (Galatians 6:2) everyone faces some distresses and discomforts in their daily lives, as Christians we should be able to use our gifts, talents and abilities to encourage them. James 2:8 tells us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves and these will hinder us from being insensitive, crude and exploitative when dealing with others. This should be one of the guiding principles in the daily life, including the scientific researches. The other guiding principle is honesty. Mark, 1971 described honesty as people who love the truth and justice; they do not lie-intentionally deceive others (Exodus 20:16), cheat- giving less ones owe or receiving something one do not deserve (Leviticus 19:35) or steal-taking something that do not belong to us (Matthew 19:18). James and Peter (1991) described integrity as wholeness of a person, ones undividedness or having moral purity (Matthew 5:8,1Kings 9:4).
Often in the scientific research field, some the researchers fail to give the subjects the respect and dignity they deserve. They treat these people like objects, manipulate and exploit them in their quest of finding solutions to various health problems. Many of the persons used as research subjects, are often economically or educationally disadvantaged and even cognitively impaired. Money, other material compensation, such as a coupon or gift certificate, or other non-monetary rewards is given to them in exchange of their service. This is research misconduct and it is very unworthy and unchristian of them.
One such instance the disregarded the tenets of good neighborliness and Biblical morals as well as social well being of human is the Tuskegee Syphilis study that was conducted between 1932 to 1972. It was so inhumane in that it subjected members of the black race, who were extensively deemed to be of lower intellectual capacity to a brutal scientific study and experimentation on Syphilis. It was conducted in a manner that deprived the Blacks, who were the subjects in the experiment, treatment from syphilis so as to see how they reacted to it and the levels of resistance. This was accompanied by regular blood samples taken from them and tests conducted which they were not privy to as the subjects. In a nut shell, the experiment was geared towards studying "the effects of not treating syphilis among the blacks" (Ralph K., 2008). To date, it is considered one of the most inhumane experiments ever conducted.
As a response, a number of bodies were formed among then the National Institute of Health (NIH), which is a federal government's agency for advancing knowledge in the biomedical and behavioral sciences in order to understand and treat human diseases through research. It has an objective of providing leadership in scientific discovery and maintaining high ethical standards in its research activities, particularly those involving human subjects so that they are not expose to any physical, social and psychological risks. They ensured this, by developing Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) which in turn ensures that; investigators must properly balance their interest in gathering data and answering research questions to protect the rights and safeguard the welfare of the research subjects.
In 1979, the National Commission drafted The Belmont Report -- Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. The Report identified three principles essential to the ethical conduct of research with humans which were fundamentally disregarded in the Tuskegee Syphilis research; Respect for persons (it involves, getting informed consent from the subjects and additional protection for the vulnerable ones), beneficence (do not harm to the subjects, maximize benefits and minimize possible harms to the subjects) and justice (fairly distribute the benefit and harm of the research among the population).
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