Question

One issue that arises in human subject research, especially when using participants with the same disease, disorder or condition as that being studied, is therapeutic misconception. This is when the patient/research subject misconceives the purpose of the research as therapeutic, e.g. treating his or her disease, disorder or condition. I have two questions: (1) what is the basic purpose of human subject research and (2) how can the therapeutic misconception be avoided?

Answer 1

1. The basic purpose of involving a human subject into a research is to benefit the society through the findings of the research. Human studies have more precision on the cause and effect phenomena, compared to animal studies. Because the ultimate goal is to use the intervention o benefit the human. Any how one should be more careful that the risk should not exceed the benefit.

2. Many a times the participants of the research fail to understand and appreciate the difference between the research and clinical care, here arises the therapeutic misconception. Though its very hard to eliminate this occurrence completely, it is always possible to reduce its impact over the subjects. One such method to overcome this effect is through informed consent.

Rather than giving only the information about the trial to the subjects, if this step is handled carefully by making it as an educational session(informed discussion) to the subjects about their participation, the gap involved can be met to an extent