Cases of violations of ethical principles in medical and public health history

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Required Reading

ACHE. (2016). ACHE code of ethics. Retrieved from https://ache.org/abt_ache/code.cfm


Flite, C. A., & Harman, L. B. (2013). Code of ethics: Principles for ethical leadership. Perspectives in Health Information Management / AHIMA, American Health Information Management Association, 10(Winter), 1d. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3544144/


NAHQ. (2011). NAHQ Code of ethics and standards of practice for healthcare professionals. Retrieved from http://nahq.org/about/code-of-ethics


Airth-Kindree, N., & Kirkhorn, L. C. (2016). Ethical grand rounds: Teaching ethics at the point of care. Nursing Education Perspectives, 37(1), 48-50. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.5480/13-1128


Benson, Michael D,M.D., F.A.C.O.G., Benson, Jordan B,C.P.A., J.D., & Stein, Mark S,J.D., PhD. (2016). Hospital quality improvement: Are peer review immunity, privilege, and confidentiality in the public interest? Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy, 11(1), 1-27.


Brothers, K. B., & Rothstein, M. A. (2015). Ethical, legal and social implications of incorporating personalized medicine into healthcare. Personalized Medicine, 12(1), 43-51. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.2217/pme.14.65


Denecke, K., Bamidis, P., Bond, C., Gabarron, E., Househ, M., Lau, A. Y. S., … Hansen, M. (2015). Ethical Issues of Social Media Usage in Healthcare. Yearbook of Medical Informatics, 10(1), 137–147. Available in the Trident Online Library.


Fiscella, K., Tobin, J. N., Carroll, J. K., He, H., & Ogedegbe, G. (2015). Ethical oversight in quality improvement and quality improvement research: New approaches to promote a learning health care system. BMC Medical Ethics, 16(63). doi: 10.1186/s12910-015-0056-2. Accessed from http://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-015-0056-2


Ghosh, K. (2015). Benevolent leadership in not-for-profit organizations. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(5), 592-611.


Gillon, R. (2015). Defending the four principles approach as a good basis for good medical practice and therefore for good medical ethics. Journal of medical ethics, 41(1), 111-116.


Healthcare Financial Management Association [HFMA]. (2016). HFMA’s code of ethics. Accessed from https://www.hfma.org/code/


Kostkova, Patty P. (2016). Who owns the fata? Open fata for healthcare. Frontiers in Public Health, 4(4), 7. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2016.00007


Kulshreshtha, P. (2015). Ethical leadership and contemporary organizational ethics: Principles and cases. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 12(1), 94-97.
Mascone, C. F. (2015). Navigating ethical dilemmas. Chemical Engineering Progress, 111(2), 3.


McLean, S. A. M. & Campbell, T.D. (Ed.). (2006). Applied legal philosophy: First do no harm: Law, ethics and healthcare. Abingdon, GB: Routledge.

Assignment Overview

There have been many cases of violations of ethical principles in medical and public health history. It is important to study these and understand not only what went wrong, but the implications of a failure to follow ethical principles, to ensure that these things do not happen again.

**Case Assignment

For this assignment, you will be creating a PowerPoint presentation. Three cases are listed below. For each case, you will provide a background and then apply at least the 4 basic ethical principles reviewed thus far in the course; you may research and apply additional ones. For each principle, explain why it was violated in this case. If you do not believe that the principle was violated, explain why. This should not be opinion, but should be your analysis of the cases and the principles; do not use first person. 

*Your slides should be in presentation format and your text should be in your speaker’s notes. You must include speaker’s notes. Remember to cite your sources.

*You will need to research the cases below. Be sure that you are using reliable sources for your information; peer-reviewed articles, academic books, government web pages and documents. You may use newspaper articles, but these should not be your principle and only source to discuss an individual case.

  • The Tuskegee Experiment
  • Henrietta Lacks and the development of the HeLa cell line
  • Nazi Medical Experiments

Assignment Expectations

  1. Conduct additional research to gather sufficient information to support your analysis.
  2. Your presentation should have at least 6 slides, as well as a cover slide and reference slide.
  3. Support your presentation with peer-reviewed articles, and use at least 6 references. For additional information on how to recognize peer-reviewed journals, see http://www.angelo.edu/services/library/handouts/peerrev.php
  4. You may use the following source to assist in your formatting your assignment: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/