Читать книгу A Companion to Medical Anthropology онлайн

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A large number of the current ethical problems medical anthropologists face result from the unanticipated consequences of multidisciplinary research designs where there are competing ethical frameworks from disparate disciplines. Others result from the unfortunate clash of two positive ethical principles. These are labeled as ethical dilemmas; a situation where two or more of the basic ethical principles are in conflict, and where adherence to one of the principles may violate another (see Singer et al. 1999; Whiteford and Trotter 2008). For example, medical anthropology researchers promise confidentiality to each and every person they interview, and promise to protect any information they provide (such as their health status). But they also promise to limit any harm that might result from participation in the research, to every participant. As a consequence, they are faced with the dilemma of what to do if a married couple is enrolled an AIDS prevention project, and they find out one partner is HIV positive and is having unprotected sex with their uninfected partner but is not telling the other that they are living with an infected person. There is a clear conflict between the two principles of confidentiality and do no harm for the project. In this kind of situation, the researcher may have to decide if they have a greater obligation to protect confidentiality, or to prevent harm to the uninfected person. Preventing harm may help the one individual, but breaking confidentiality may harm the entire project, since anyone who heard about the breach would either quit the project or would not participate. There are times when the researcher is forced to decide which of two ethical principles takes precedence in a particular research situation, and the choice of one principle causes the other principle to be violated in some minor or major way. A practical guide for practicing anthropologist who inevitably encounter these types of ethical dilemmas before, during, and after field research and data collection use the Whiteford and Trotter (2008) ethical workup guide/procedure to reduce unintended ethical consequences.