| Title | Ethical dilemmas created by the criminalization of status behaviors: case examples from ethnographic field research with injection drug users. |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2002 |
| Authors | Buchanan, David, Kaveh Khoshnood, Tom Stopka, Susan Shaw, Claudia Santelices, and Merrill Singer |
| Journal | Health education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pagination | 30-42 |
| Date Published | 2002 Feb |
| ISSN | 1090-1981 |
| Keywords | Anthropology, Cultural, Confidentiality, Crime, Ethics, Evaluation Studies as Topic, Health Services Research, HIV Infections, Humans, Informed Consent, Motivation, Public Health, Risk-Taking, Substance Abuse, Intravenous, Syringes, United States |
| Abstract | 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. |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1542-2011.2011.00028.x |
| Alternate Journal | Health Educ Behav |
