About five years ago, I was among a dozen or so medical and nursing students involved in a short-term medical outreach trip to Honduras. At the time, I assumed that what I was doing was “ethical.” I thought it was altruistic. But as time passes, the value of what the Hondurans gave me seems to surpass the value of the medical care I helped deliver. If that’s right, then was the trip fundamentally different from the international AIDS clinical trials that years before received such scrutiny?
About five years ago, I was among a dozen or so medical and nursing students involved in a short-term medical outreach trip to Honduras. At the time, I assumed that what I was doing was “ethical.” I thought it was altruistic. But as time passes, the value of what the Hondurans gave me seems to surpass the value of the medical care I helped deliver. If that’s right, then was the trip fundamentally different from the international AIDS clinical trials that years before received such scrutiny?