The Cultural Contradictions of International Research

Research in the developing world is quicksand, firewalls, and floods occasionally punctuated by light skies and cool winds. One thorny issue, suppressed to varying levels of depth in researchers' psyches, is the problem of ethics. Ethics not just in the sense of does Drug A's potential benefit outweigh its potential risk, but the foggier and subtler ethics involving cultural difference, the motivations, explicit and buried, of researchers and their collaborators, and the fundamental, overt power discrepancies between the North and the South.

Some folks talk of the 3 M's of global health: Missionaries, Mercenaries, and Misfits (a fourth M has also been proposed--Meddlers). Useful caricatures to a certain extent, but we certainly live in a more ambigious reality where many who work in RLS (resource-limited settings) have a mix of these characteristics--some of which may be in conflict. And the evolution/devolution from one M to another is a constant source of intrigue, talk, and concern.