Governments should not fund any scientific research whose consequences are unclear.Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should

Scientific researchers should be able to foresee possible consequences of a study before initiating a study or requesting for a study funding.

The consequences of scientific research should be seen at least at two levels : the consequences of studies on study participants (i.e participants recruited to respond to questions or to go through experiments, procedures etc ) and secondly the consequence of studies on the general population should be assessed. Potential minor and major emotional, physical, social and psychological risks of a study should be thoroughly examined. A proposal that thoroughly present the potential benefit and harm of a study should be presented to an ethics board committee so that the committee could make decision on whether the study could be conducted (if there are no potential risk or if the risk is minor eg. a prick on the finger to collect small blood for HIV testing may be harm but is not major harm) or not (eg. an experimental study exposing participants to harmful chemicals should not be approved by ethics committee). If researchers are unclear/unsure of the consequence of the study, it is better not to implement the study at a full scale or on human being. Small piloting of studies or if applicable doing animal exprements is more safer than implementing the study on human particpants without clear understanding of the potential consequences of the study. Reviewing avaialble literature/ studies conducted in a similar way should also give guidance to foresee the expected consequences of a study on participants.

Without making such thorough assessment of consequences of a study initiating a study that involve human being or the human enviroment (including lives in the enviroment other than human being) without clear understanding of its risk on a population is unethical as it exposes study participants to potential harm. Therefore government need to strengthen its policy on research funding (especially on research that involve people) so that all research should pass through ethics assessment.

Several examples can be given to show the disadvantage of conducting studies without thorough assessment of their potential consequences. Many microbicidal studies conducted in developing countries are examples of such studies which did not adequately assessed the potential consequences of exposing participants to microbicidals for prevention of HIV. At least in these studies the impact of social factors that ultimately exposed participants to more riskier behaviour was not assessed in the context of the study area. Hence the microbicidals brought more risk to the study participants than benefit. Hence, assessing the consequences of studies in the context of the social, and economic influential factors of the study participants and the society is essential.

Secondly, the consequences of studies on the general public/ population should be assessed. If a study has no benefit (direct or indirect beneift) that it brings to the population under study, then there is no benefit in conducting such study. If the study has no direct or indirect positive potential consequence for the study population, funding such studies is misuse of resource. Several examples could be mentioned to illustrate the lack of benefit of studies that add no new knowledge or benefit to the society. Many studies conducted without proper knowledge of their benefit has been a resource waste. Also one need to assess the benefit of a study in the light of already existing knowledge. If there are research already conducted that address the questions of a given study, the value of repeating the same research should be examined.

Hence, without assessing the potential consequences of studies on study participants and the general study population, initiating studies could result in more damage than good on study participants and fund managment. Hence government should strengthen its funding policy by restricting funding to those studies that thoroughly assess the potential consequences of the study. The potential benefits of the study should always outweigh the potential risk of the study. At least on studies that involve human population the consequences of the studies on the study participants should be clear. No study should be conducted on human being without assessing its consequences on study participants.

On the other hand, there is no risk in providing funding to studies that have no harm on human being or the environment. For instance studies that involve laboratory animals (eg. rats) the study could be conducted in a secured laboratory settings without causing any harm on human being or its environment. For such studies we should not expect to know every consequence of conducting the study as they could be at early exploratory phase. As more formidable and popular research rise from such type of exploratory research, government should be flexible to allow funding for such studies even if they don't have clarity of consequences at their initial (exploration) phase . Hence, in order to promote innovation, government should allow funding for exploratory research with unclear consequences, after ruling out any negative impacts on human being or its environment (including lives other than human being). For other studies that involve human being or its environment (including lives in the environment other than human being) the potential consequences of conducting the study should be clearly presented so that government can making funding available after outweighing the risk and benefit of conducting such studies.