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A group of researchers is calling for the retraction of more than 400 scientific papers after a first-of-its-kind study that claims countless human organs were unethically harvested from prisoners in China.
The study, which was published in the journal BMJ Open and led by Australian researchers, highlights a facet of scientific ethics that does not receive a lot of attention. Namely, that many English-language academic journals do not follow international ethics rules over donor consent for organ transplants.
“There’s no real pressure from research leaders on China to be more transparent,” Wendy Rogers, a professor of clinical ethics at Macquarie University and the study’s author, told the Guardian. “Everyone seems to say, ‘It’s not our job.’ The world’s silence on this barbaric issue must stop.”
[...] The study looked at research papers published from January 2000 until April 2017. Researchers identified 445 studies involving 85,477 transplants. A staggering 92.5 percent failed to report whether or not organs were sourced from executed prisoners, while 99 percent failed to report that organ sources gave consent for transplantation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sulla on Thursday February 07 2019, @11:17PM (1 child)
Agreed. Was it immoral for the Japanese to test on Chinese/Americans/British/Australians in WWII without anesthetic for research? It very much was. Is it a good idea to throw out research that has already been done and spend years trying to replicate it on more willing subjects? No way.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Friday February 08 2019, @06:06AM
No, we shouldn't throw out the research, but perhaps it might be better deny them credit for any such discoveries as much as possible. That's the most that can reasonably be done, and I believe that is what is being attempted with the Nazi research findings that came out of the concentration camps. Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration, formerly known as Hallervorden–Spatz disease, was discovered by Julius Hallervorden and Hugo Spatz, two Nazi doctors who arrived at their findings by examining brains harvested from Nazi euthanasia victims. The Paralysis agitans reaction, formerly known as the Spatz–Stiefler reaction, was discovered by the aforementioned Spatz and Georg Stiefler from the same process. Portal vein thrombosis, previously known as Cauchois–Eppinger–Frugoni syndrome, was previously named partly for Hans Eppinger, who conducted cruel experiments on Romani concentration camp prisoners at Dachau. He committed suicide just before he would have been made to face the music at Nuremberg. Is there a stand-in name like Alan Smithee that can be used for these papers so that these unethical scientists don't get their names cited?
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.