I’ve been stewing some time about CBS’s upcoming reality show (read: social experiment) called Kid Nation. I’ve thought this show was just a bad idea from the start, after what I admit was a fleeting moment of interest and curiosity when I first saw a commercial for the show. But it wasn’t until NPR did a story questioning not only the production’s motives, but more importantly the long terms impacts of the experience on the children itself, that I gave the matter much thought.

No-one could possibly be fooling themselves to think that CBS made this show any reason other than to make money — and definitely not to “promote goodwill and a learning experience [for children] on a positive note,” as a mother quoted in this Detroit Free Press story hypothesized. So what’s bothering me is the general media silence and lack of public concern over the new show, the NPR show notwithstanding.

Note, for instance, that the Detroit story is filed under ‘Sports.’ Too, note the quote by mother Jacqui Hollier “Is this ‘Lord of the Flies’? Kids with their own little society? Wow!”

“Wow”? That’s all you have to say? Have you READ Lord of the Flies?

Now certainly there have been a few good concerns raised in what stories have been published (the Detroit Free Press story included). But I’m looking for something from a higher authority here - how about a Congressional investigation - or is our legislature too busy looking into steroid use in Professional Wrestling?

When public research institutions such as universities want to stage a controlled social experiment (i.e. an experiment with human subjects), they first have to put significant effort into developing a research protocol, which explicitly describes how any physical and/or psychological stresses will be avoided and/or mitigated. That protocol is submitted for approval to an Institutional Review Board (IRB), a panel of specialists on the ethics of research involving human subjects. Every institution in the US and most other countries have one of these boards, in the States they are federally mandated. Or, to restate, research involving human subjects that has not been reviewed by an IRB is illegal.

These are the three general categories for review established by federal regulations which provide the framework for IRB protocol review.

• Respect for persons (autonomy)
  Primarily, this aspect is to remind researchers that the research should never become more important than the research subjects - this set of priorities is expected to be reflected throughout a research protocol.
• Beneficence
  This means that the research activities are designed in mind to benefit the greatest number of people, first and foremost the subjects themselves. But researchers need to go further than that, to demonstrate how their research is beneficial to society at large.
• Justice
  Research subjects are expected to be treated fairly and consistently. Research activities are expected to be the same for every subject, otherwise multiple protocols must be reviewed. Each subject shall be fully informed about the research process and their rights to opt out at any time. Too, should research subjects belong to one or more groups considered ‘at risk’ or ‘disabled’, including children under 18, pregnant women and individuals with diminished mental capacity, the protocol is subject to an additional level of scrutiny.

How does Kid Nation benefit society? How does it respect our children by turning them into a spectacle? And how does it respect their physical and psychological well being, given that we know so little about the developmental psychology of childhood trauma?

I greatly respect the IRB process; it is all that separates us from the days when the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was considered sound science. Why, however, do we not hold our capitalist ventures to at least as high a standard of ethical review as we do our academic pursuits?

If you agree with me on this, I urge you to contact your senators and congressman. I think this needs to enter the public and political discourse.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 9:24 am by Philip Loring and is filed under Current Events, Democracy, Research, Rhetoric. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.