Faculty Introduction for “The Participation of Impoverished Peoples in Placebo-Controlled Pharmaceutical Trials: Scientific Innovation or Neocolonial Exploitation?”

This essay represents an ambitious attempt to deepen our thinking about a significant debate in medical ethics. Madison submitted this paper as her final research project in Writing as Inquiry (Writing II). The assignment asked students to use either Kant or Mill to enhance our thinking about a contemporary moral problem or ethical debate. It also required them to work with a range of sources to advance their chosen line of inquiry. Madison accomplishes both of these tasks rather effectively. Her use of source material is particularly impressive as she develops and deepens her analysis. I also admire her attempt to adapt (rather than merely apply) a Kantian framework to help us see this debate from a new perspective. Taking up an approach, as Madison attempts here, is one of the more challenging moves we all face as academic writers.

Read “The Participation of Impoverished Peoples in Placebo-Controlled Pharmaceutical Trials: Scientific Innovation or Neocolonial Exploitation?” here.

Paul Woolridge, Lecturer in the Writing Program