title: Ethical dilemmas created by the criminalization of status behaviors: case examples from ethnographic field research with injection drug users.
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.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health and Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 01003, USA. buchanan@schoolph.umass.edu
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Buchanan
authors.forename: Kaveh
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Khoshnood
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stopka
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shaw
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Santelices
authors.forename: Merrill
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Singer
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D003219:Confidentiality; D003415:Crime; D004989:Ethics; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000208:ethnology / Q000209:etiology; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D009042:Motivation; D011634:Public Health; D012309:Risk-Taking; D015819:Substance Abuse, Intravenous / Q000150:complications / Q000208:ethnology*; D013594:Syringes; D014481:United States