I recently watched a very moving documentary called ‘Three Identical Strangers’.
It was about triplets that had been separated when they were 6 months old. They were each adopted by separate families who thought they were single babies in-need of adoption and without any siblings, which obviously wasn’t the case. It later came out that the children had purposefully been separated and raised by different families who had different beliefs, financial situations etc. all as part of a study into Nurture Vs. Nature.
The babies all suffered from separation anxiety when they were adopted by different families. The children were watched, studied and tested throughout their childhood to see how they were developing, and how this development differed from their brothers. Later in life, as adults all of the children suffered from mental health disorders in some way, and very sadly even one of the brothers ended up committing suicide.
This documentary is loosely linked to my inquiry as there is an obvious presence of mental health issues. However, I am mostly sharing this because I am looking at it from an ethical side.
The choice to separate family members as children to study their development, to me and many, seems very morally and ethically wrong. The families were unaware of why the children were been studied and the study obviously caused a lot of pain to the participants.
Through investigation it was later revealed that this family of triplets was not the only case and that this had happened to many babies who were either twins or triplets.
The case has been deeply hidden and even the participants, now grown adults, are not allowed access to there own data that was collected and recorded about them.
It leads me to question how and why this was allowed, where the data has gone and who would do such a thing? It is shocking to me that people knew this was going on and happily took part in leading or carrying out the study!!
It is a very interesting documentary and I advise people to watch it if they can. It has lead me to really focus on the ethical side to carrying out my inquiry as it really highlights the importance of data protection, informing participants fully, getting consent and following ethical guidelines that are there for a very clear reason.
If any of you have chance to watch the documentary or have heard of other similar situations I would love to hear your opinions!
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