Well, another school year has begun. At this time last year I was just beginning my sabbatical. This fall, I have assumed responsibility for teaching an undergraduate research course. I'm loving the course, and I'm teaching it because the colleague who "owns" the course is out on her own sabbatical. I am using my Sunland study as one of many projects to illustrate research concepts to my students. I made it all the way to Chapter 2 in Fain's "Reading, Understanding, and Applying Nursing Research" before I found a direct link to my study. In a section on historical events involving misuse of human subjects, the book includes a paragraph on the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, and how parents were forced to consent to their mentally handicapped children being injected with the hepatitis B virus as a condition of admission.
I didn't bring out this information in my study, I focused on the overcrowding and gross neglect of residents, and how the discovery of this in the early 1970's was an impetus for the de-institutionalization movement. Fain points out that the belief at the time was that, when no cure or treatment for a disease existed, it was acceptable to do a "study of nature" and observe its course. At Willowbrook, the study continued from the 1950's to 1970's.
No comments:
Post a Comment