Which of the following is an ethical lapse example in biomedical research?

The example of the Willowbrook Study represents a significant ethical lapse in biomedical research due to the violation of ethical standards in the treatment of human subjects. Conducted between 1956 and 1970, this research involved the deliberate infection of children, who were residents at the Willowbrook State School for mentally disabled individuals in New York, with hepatitis to study the progression of the disease and its impact.

The ethical concerns surrounding this study are profound. The children were not fully informed about the nature of the experiments, and their consent was questionable, as many of them were unable to provide informed consent due to their cognitive abilities. The researchers justified the study on ethical grounds, claiming that the children would become infected anyway because of the high incidence of hepatitis at the institution, but this rationale falls short when considering the moral obligation to protect vulnerable populations and the necessity of obtaining genuine informed consent from participants.

In contrast, the Nuremberg Trials, the Belmont Report, and the Helsinki Declaration are all significant documents or events that aimed to establish ethical guidelines and principles for human research. The Nuremberg Trials were a response to the unethical experimentation conducted by Nazi doctors during World War II, leading to the formulation of the Nuremberg Code, which emphasizes voluntary consent and informed participation