The key ethical issues raised in the case study involving the SARS research, were that the center for disease control wanted blood samples from individuals who may have come into contact with the index case—i.e., the person who had SARS. If that person was on, say, a flight, the center wanted information from as many people on that flight as possible. The point was not to contact individuals to alert them of any danger, as they would have already passed out of danger or been placed into the hospital if they were in danger by the time they were located. The point was merely to obtain data so that the center could better understand the disease and how it spread. Thus, the key ethical issues involved obtaining consent from the participants in the study. Every participant in a study has a right to take part or not take part in the study—and every participant has the right to know what the participant’s role is and what the information is being used for. Likewise, no participant must take part in the study without giving consent.Informed consent can be regarded as: the process by which researchers engage in “(1) disclosing to potential research subjects information needed...
As De Bord (2014) notes, informed consent must be obtained whenever a patient is treated or something is required of a patient. Drawing blood from a patient so that the spread of SARS could be better studied would be a case in which informed consent would be required.
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The data was clearly collected for research, since the time for surveillance had already passed as had the time for prevention. The Center simply wanted to know more about SARS since it had limited information at that point, and obtaining blood samples would allow the researchers to see if the disease had spread and what types of people were more susceptible. Thus, the whole point of the data collection was to obtain information for research purposes—and thus the people involved in the data collection should have been required to obtain informed consent from participants from whom blood was drawn.
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Informed consent should have been required as the participants were…
