Ethical Research Practice

Your sister decides to take the plunge and have a facelift (despite the fact that you think she looks fine and you try to talk her out of it!). The surgeon she consults has a good reputation and although the small private clinic is not a research institution, it has a warm and friendly atmosphere. The surgery goes well, but some time afterwards you start to notice a slight difference between the left and right side of her face. A year later, the local television news airs an expose about two plastic surgeons at the clinic. The plastic surgeons had decided to conduct an informal research study on two facelift surgical procedures by each performing one half of the face-lift on a number of patients to investigate the differences in the procedure. Ethical? Safe? Why were they allowed to perform this type of research?

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