Deck 13: Issues in Bioethics

Question 1

The "Baby Fae" case shows that

A) the establishment of research ethics boards by itself cannot prevent unethical research practices.
B) animal-to-human organ transplants are feasible.
C) parents may not have their babies' best interests in mind when they make medical decisions.
D) doctors discriminate against disabled infants.
E) euthanasia of seriously disabled infants should be considered seriously.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Which of the following statements is true?

A) The AMA first adopted a code of ethics in 1970.
B) The public responded with horror to news of Dr. Sims' experiments on slave women.
C) The Nazi philosophy was grounded in part in eugenics.
D) The eugenics movement never gained a foothold in the United States.
E) From the start, most German doctors opposed the Nazis.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Hospital ethics committees

A) now exist at about 10 percent of US hospitals.
B) offered legal protection to doctors who performed abortions before it was legalized.
C) now focus primarily on the ethics of medical research.
D) have essentially replaced the use of individual ethics consultants.
E) now focus primarily on abortion decisions.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

The Nuremberg Code

A) is a set of principles adopted by Nazi doctors.
B) is a set of principles regarding the ethics of human experimentation.
C) was used by the Nazis to hide news of their actions from other Germans.
D) was the first effort to break the DNA code.
E) was developed during the 1920s.

Question 5

In the Baby Doe case,

A) doctors performed surgery unlikely to improve the baby's quality of life.
B) parents forced the doctors to perform surgery that the doctors considered unwarranted.
C) the baby died after its parents refused to authorize potentially life-saving surgery.
D) doctors demanded federal funding for performing surgery on a retarded baby.
E) lawyers forced parents to comply with their doctors' decisions regarding their baby's care.

Question 6

Henry Beecher,writing in 1966,stated that medical journals

A) needed to pay more attention to psychological research.
B) adequately screened out proposed articles that relied on unethical methods.
C) sometimes published articles that relied on unethical research methods.
D) routinely ignored reviewers who raised questions about research ethics.
E) needed to pay more attention to sociological research.

Question 7

Is it ethical for the federal government to pay the costs of kidney dialysis for all patients,regardless of age or income,as it now does,but not to pay the costs of other illnesses? Which would be more reasonable and more feasible: extending benefits to those who have other illnesses or withdrawing them from those who need kidney dialysis?

Question 8

The purpose of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was to investigate

A) which treatments worked best for syphilis.
B) which men were most likely to become infected with syphilis.
C) whether blacks were more likely than whites to become infected with syphilis.
D) whether some treatments for syphilis worked better with whites than with blacks.
E) the long-term effects of untreated syphilis in African-American men.

Question 9

Which state's health care system extended coverage to poor residents by deciding in advance that it would not fund certain health care procedures?

A) California
B) Hawaii
C) Oregon
D) Arizona
E) Alaska

Question 10

The effectiveness of commercial Institutional Review Boards is limited by

A) conflicts of interest.
B) insufficient federal oversight.
C) managed care regulations.
D) their reliance on career bureaucrats.
E) heavy-handed federal oversight committees.

Question 11

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study lasted for about

A) three years.
B) five years.
C) ten years.
D) forty years.
E) seventy years.

Question 12

During the 1960s,hospital selection committees

A) typically decided who would receive kidney dialysis based solely on medical criteria.
B) typically decided who would receive kidney dialysis based in part on social criteria.
C) typically decided who would receive kidney dialysis based solely on age.
D) were abolished by most hospitals.
E) were declared legal, but nonetheless fell into disuse.

Question 13

Why should sociologists concern themselves with bioethical issues? Why should bioethicists study sociology?

Question 14

Under the Nazi government,

A) doctors sterilized persons considered genetically inferior.
B) the marriage of persons with certain diseases was prohibited.
C) doctors supervised the killings of state mental hospital patients.
D) doctors decided which concentration camp inmates would be killed immediately.
E) all of the above

Question 15

Researchers for the Tuskegee Syphilis Study

A) purposely infected black men with syphilis.
B) enlisted the support of local doctors to ensure that their subjects would not receive treatment for syphilis.
C) received no government funding for their work.
D) were forced to stop the study after five years.
E) followed the guidelines laid out in established codes of research ethics.

Question 16

Researchers in the Willowbrook study obtained

A) fully voluntary consent from the parents of their subjects.
B) fully informed consent from the parents of their subjects.
C) consent from the parents of their subjects, but that consent was neither informed nor voluntary.
D) no consent of any sort from the parents of their subjects.
E) consent from their subjects directly.

Question 17

Is "cosmetic pharmacology" ethical? Does the fact that it is only available to some individuals make it any more or less ethical? Could cosmetic pharmacology eventually increase social inequality?

Question 18

In the study conducted at the Willowbrook State School,doctors

A) purposely infected children with hepatitis.
B) treated children who had hepatitis.
C) intervened to improve the horrendous conditions in which children were living.
D) cut short their experiment once they realized hepatitis could be cured with new drugs.
E) found a cure for hepatitis through unethical methods.

Question 19

The modern bioethics movement developed in the

A) 1920s.
B) 1930s.
C) 1940s.
D) 1960s.
E) 1990s.

Question 20

"Cosmetic psychopharmacology" refers to

A) the use of drugs to give individuals advantages over others.
B) the continued use of drugs that have been proven ineffective.
C) the use of non-prescription drugs by patients.
D) the use of drugs by individuals disfigured by burns.
E) the use of drugs by the "genetic underclass."

Question 21

Research on the impact of the bioethics movement suggests that doctors

A) have changed how they make decisions about patient care but not how they document those decisions.
B) are now less likely than in the past to tell patients that they have cancer.
C) have become more committed to incorporating ethical principles into their work.
D) still can assert their discretion over patient care, even when they cannot enforce their decisions.
E) routinely fight hard against hospital bureaucrats in order to practice ethically.

Question 22

The adoption of bioethical guidelines has led to which of the following?

A) Clinicians who focus more on documenting their compliance with guidelines than on following the spirit of those guidelines.
B) Ethics review boards that focus primarily on reducing law suits.
C) Significant reduction in the worst sorts of abuses of human subjects.
D) all of the above
E) none of the above

Question 23

Which of the following is intended to ensure that medical researchers behave ethically?

A) Institutional Review Boards
B) diagnosis-related groups
C) medical malpractice laws
D) medical mortality review boards
E) reproductive technologies

Question 24

Which of the following statements about stem cell research is true?

A) Supporters argue that it will stem the rise in new cases of cancer.
B) It has increasingly shifted into universities and away from the for-profit sector.
C) Opponents equate harvesting stem cells to killing humans.
D) It has already produced effective treatments for several diseases.
E) none of the above

Question 25

The Karen Quinlan case demonstrated the problems caused when doctors

A) extend life without regard to the quality of that life.
B) perform organ transplants.
C) perform kidney dialysis.
D) genetically alter fetuses.
E) transfer patients from hospitals to nursing homes.

Question 26

Research suggests that doctors can assert their decisions in clinical practice by

A) making decisions without asking the family first.
B) ignoring the family's stated wishes.
C) shaping the family's wishes through the information they provide.
D) all of the above
E) a and b only

Question 27

The Nuremberg Code states that

A) patients deserve a right to die.
B) patients deserve a right to any treatment they request.
C) medical researchers must do all they can to protect their subjects from harm.
D) dying patients should be offered the right to donate their organs.
E) medical researchers must pay their research subjects.