The Puerto Rico Pill Trials Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

The Puerto Rico Pill Trials Case Solution

The ethical dilemma involves around the experimentation of an oral contraceptive pill to the uneducated, lower class and poor women, without an informed consent in Puerto Rico. The contraceptive pill was developed by Margaret Sanger, who had firm belief in sexual and motherhood freedom for women. In the US, the endorsement of contraceptive devices and information were considered among criminal laws. Moreover, there were other problems apart from the religious and the societal oppositions, i.e. other birth control options,including: condoms or cervical caps, which were not liked by the males and females, which led to the development of an oral contraceptive by Sanger. The experimentation was conducted by two experienced scientists: Gregory Pincus and Dr. John rock, who had experience in sterilizations and birth controls among rabbits and women, respectively.

The population chosen for the study included women from a small Catholic island, i.e. Puerto Rico. The key reasons for choosing the Puerto Rican population as an experiment subject were based on the extremely poor population, with no access to or information about the contraceptives or birth control measures and a large population size, leading to extreme poverty levels. Another reason included the adoption of anti-birth control laws as opposed to the US Laws in Puerto Rico. The researchers believed that the introduction of pill would eliminate the poverty and would improve the living standards of such a deprived population.

But the trial had remained problematic in history due to a number of reasons. First of all, the participants chosen for the experimentation included women residing in a slum areas, where young women were fighting to escape pregnancy and poverty. The targeted subject was not educated, belonged to an underprivileged area, without any prior information regarding the possible side effects of the pills. The trial was considered to be enforcing the barriers of race and class. The ethical dilemma involved the uniformed consent and enforcement of discriminatory actions in the experimentation. It is because the women were not informed about the untested pill rather they were given wrong information that the pill will reduce the birth rate. The women were not informed about the possible side effects and consequences of the pill’s side effects, including: nausea, diarrhea, headaches, stomach pain etc. 17% of the subject complained about the side effects and 3 healthy women died during the experimentation, but no consideration was given to the whole scenario. The trial is considered to have exploited the underprivileged east coast for the public consumption by the privileged, educated and high class society.

The trail violated the ethical considerations by adopting the uniformed consent and discriminatory actions in experiments for testing the oral contraceptive pills. Prior to the testing, the researchers made sure that there are no possible side effects, even if there are; the each subject must be informed about the possible side effects. Moreover, instead of removing the barriers; the trial enforced the race and class barriers by choosing the uneducated, slum population, who weren’t given any prior about the drug to be experimented on them, and using the testing results for the improvement in living standards of the educated and upper class people, residing the United States......................

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The Puerto Rico Pill Trials Harvard Case Solution & Analysis