TY - JOUR
T1 - Ethical dilemmas created by the criminalization of status behaviors
T2 - Case examples from ethnographic field research with injection drug users
AU - Buchanan, David
AU - Khoshnood, Kaveh
AU - Stopka, Tom
AU - Shaw, Susan
AU - Santelices, Claudia
AU - Singer, Merrill
PY - 2002/2
Y1 - 2002/2
N2 - The criminalization of behaviors such as the ingestion of certain mood-altering drugs creates ethical dilemmas for researchers studying those behaviors. The Syringe Access, Use, and Discard (SAUD) project is designed to uncover microcontextual factors that influence HIV and hepatitis risk behaviors of injection drug users. The article presents seven ethical dilemmas encountered using ethnographic methods: issues involving syringe replacement at injection locales, risks of participants' arrest, potential disruptions in participants' supply routes, risks of research staff arrest, threats to the protection of confidentiality, issues surrounding informed consent in working with addicts, and the confiscation of potentially incriminating information by police. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of traditional ethical frameworks, such as utilitarianism, for resolving these dilemmas and recommends instead improving public health professionals' capacity for practical reasoning (phronesis) through the greater use of case studies in public health curricula.
AB - The criminalization of behaviors such as the ingestion of certain mood-altering drugs creates ethical dilemmas for researchers studying those behaviors. The Syringe Access, Use, and Discard (SAUD) project is designed to uncover microcontextual factors that influence HIV and hepatitis risk behaviors of injection drug users. The article presents seven ethical dilemmas encountered using ethnographic methods: issues involving syringe replacement at injection locales, risks of participants' arrest, potential disruptions in participants' supply routes, risks of research staff arrest, threats to the protection of confidentiality, issues surrounding informed consent in working with addicts, and the confiscation of potentially incriminating information by police. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of traditional ethical frameworks, such as utilitarianism, for resolving these dilemmas and recommends instead improving public health professionals' capacity for practical reasoning (phronesis) through the greater use of case studies in public health curricula.
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U2 - 10.1177/109019810202900105
DO - 10.1177/109019810202900105
M3 - Article
C2 - 11822551
AN - SCOPUS:0036482913
SN - 1090-1981
VL - 29
SP - 30
EP - 42
JO - Health Education and Behavior
JF - Health Education and Behavior
IS - 1
ER -