To what extent of severity must observations in an experiment be to halt The Bucharest Early Intervention Project?

 

In a 2000 study, Zeanah et al. launched the Bucharest Early Intervention Project. This was an international collaboration by America and Romania to investigate and compare the effects of children in foster care homes and children in child institutions run by the government in Romania. Romania was chosen as the setting for investigation due to its large growth in child institutions and orphans. This increase in child population was caused by the Communist Party’s creation of the “Romanian Workers Army”. All women under the age of 40 were required to birth five children in order to increase the work force. Many families could not support that many kids; as a result, many children were given up to government institutions by the poor families. In contrast to Romania, majority of orphaned children were placed in foster care homes in the United States. With the increasing use of child institutions in Romania, Zeanah and associates took this opportunity to observe the effects of orphaned children in order to find the best method of upbring: child institutions or foster homes. However, this study raises a lot of questions and controversy on the ethics of such an investigation.

Zeanah and associates claim that the researched benefits outweigh the risk. The research will be used in order to help children after its completion. This raises the question whether saving the help for the future instead of the present is really a good alternative. According to a 2015 article posted on the website The World, Vlad Odebescu tells the story of half a million kids who were abused in Romain Orphanages after the end of the Cold War. The living conditions were abysmal and the one’s running the orphanages were corrupt. Children experiences hunger, cold, beatings, and sexual abuse. Would the Bucharest Project need to be halted by law if instances like these are found to be occurring again? Protection of vulnerable participants are determined by a rule of minimal risk. The Bucharest Project states minimal risk as “the probability and magnitude if harm or discomfort anticipated in the research are not greater in and of themselves than those ordinarily encountered in daily life…” As long as the study does not implement harm on the participants greater than what they already experience, the study is ethical. What if what the children experience in their daily lives is already at considered great harm? What is the standard? There must be a line drawn where statistical research is no longer necessary to deduce the outcomes of such an institution.

The researchers of The Bucharest Early Intervention Project do their best to keep an open mind against their American-influenced bias. However, aside from being researchers, they are also humans. The subjects are humans as well. Sometimes learning the effects of child development is not worth the knowledge.

References

Zeanah, Charles H et al. “The Bucharest Early Intervention Project: case study in the ethics of mental health research.” The Journal of nervous and mental disease vol. 200,3 (2012): 243-7. doi:10.1097/NMD.0b013e318247d275

“Half a Million Kids Survived Romania's 'Slaughterhouses of Souls.' Now They Want Justice.” The World from PRX, www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-28/half-million-kids-survived-romanias-slaughterhouses-souls-now-they-want-justice.