Human Subjects Protection: International and Regional Human Rights Standards

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It is crucial for any clinical expertise to be integrated with the best possible scientific evidence. Otherwise, it is impossible to provide patients with all the needed options. If patients have no choice, they are unable to express their preferences. Patient preferences include spiritual and religious values, cultural and social values, personal priorities, opinion regarding the quality of life and its constituents, and belief about health. Although healthcare providers realize the importance of patients input, it is often not included due to a number of barriers like literacy, race, gender, time constraints, previous knowledge, and sociocultural influences. Therefore, the use of scientific evidence only is not enough in terms of the evidence-based environment when it comes to caring for the patients (Ginex, 2018). Medical professionals should incorporate both patients values and preferences and clinical expertise, therefore, integrating science and art to improve the patient outcome.

During the Second World War and the Holocaust, Nazi researchers committed mass-scale atrocities against Jews and other prisoners under the name of medical research (Constantin, 2018). After the Nurnberg Code, a set of guidelines was developed to govern research on humans in order to prevent criminal harm to one person by another. Nevertheless, human subjects need to be duly protected till today, as there are still numerous unethical experiments performed all over the world. For instance, in 2018, Postobon, Colombias beverage company, distributed near 3,000 drinks containing uncertified chemicals to children of La Guajira (Constantin, 2018). Further, they were tested to reveal the potential effects of that product. Moreover, this research was held illegally, and its subjects were neither duly informed nor even unaware of the performed tests. Hence, it is imperative to provide appropriate protection to those being tested and make sure that they will not suffer from distress. The researcher should undertake full responsibility for protecting human subjects from mental and/or physical harm and minimize all the potential risks. Moreover, the participants of any research should have the right to withdrawal from it.