What proper role should considerations of risk, particularly to research subjects, play when it comes to conducting research on human enhancement in the military context? We introduce the currently visible military enhancement techniques (1) and the standard discussion of risk for these (2), in particular what we refer to as the ‘Assumption’, which states that the demands for risk-avoidance are higher for enhancement than for therapy. We challenge the Assumption through the introduction of three categories of enhancements (3): therapeutic, preventive, (...) and pure enhancements. This demands a revision of the Assumption (4), alongside which we propose some further general principles bearing on how to balance risks and benefits in the context of military enhancement research. We identify a particular type of therapeutic enhancements as providing a more responsible path to human trials of the relevant interventions than pure enhancement applications. Finally, we discuss some possible objections to our line of thought (5). While acknowledging their potential insights, we ultimately find them to be unpersuasive, at least provided that our proposal is understood as fully non-coercive towards the candidates for such therapeutic enhancement trials. (shrink)

Medical artificial intelligence (AI) is considered to be one of the most important assets for the future of innovative individual and public health care. To develop innovative medical AI, it is necessary to repurpose data that are primarily generated in and for the health care context. Usually, health data can only be put to a secondary use if data subjects provide their informed consent (IC). This regulation, however, is believed to slow down or even prevent vital medical research, including AI (...) development. For this reason, a number of scholars advocate a moral civic duty to share electronic health records (EHRs) that overrides IC requirements in certain contexts. In the medical AI context, the common arguments for such a duty have not been subjected to a comprehensive challenge. This article sheds light on the correlation between two normative discourses concerning informed consent for secondary health record use and the development and use of medical AI. There are three main arguments in favour of a civic duty to support certain developments in medical AI by sharing EHRs: the ‘rule to rescue argument’, the ‘low risks, high benefits argument’, and the ‘property rights argument’. This article critiques all three arguments because they either derive a civic duty from premises that do not apply to the medical AI context, or they rely on inappropriate analogies, or they ignore significant risks entailed by the EHR sharing process and the use of medical AI. Given this result, the article proposes an alternative civic responsibility approach that can attribute different responsibilities to different social groups and individuals and that can contextualise those responsibilities for the purpose of medical AI development. (shrink)

Non-beneficial paediatric research is vital to improving paediatric healthcare. Nevertheless, it is also ethically controversial. By definition, subjects of such studies are unable to give consent and they are exposed to risks only for the benefit of others, without obtaining any clinical benefits which could compensate those risks. This raises ethical concern that children participating in non-beneficial research are treated instrumentally; that they are reduced to mere instruments for the benefit of science and society. But this would make the research (...) incompatible with the widely endorsed principle of the primacy of the human subject, which stipulates that the interests of the participating individual should prevail over the interests of science and society. This paper deals with this conflict. It analyses solutions to this problem developed in the literature, and shows that they are unsuccessful. Finally, it offers a new idea of how to reconcile the conduct of non-beneficial paediatric research with the PP. The paper argues for a new formula of the PP, and shows that it implies a specific non-comparative definition of the minimal risk threshold. (shrink)

Polskie przepisy prawne formułujące warunki dopuszczalności eksperymentu medycznego, a więc ipso facto wyznaczające jego granice, można różnorako interpretować, zwłaszcza w tym zakresie, w jakim określają wymagany dla przeprowadzenia eksperymentu bilans związanych z nim możliwych korzyści i szkód. W artykułach prawniczych komentujących te przepisy w zasadzie jednak brak prób systematycznego i (na tyle, na ile pozwala na to sam przedmiot analizy) ścisłego wyróżnienia tych interpretacji w języku tzw. teorii racjonalnego wyboru (rational choice theory), teorii szczególnie przydatnej w tym kontekście z uwagi (...) na jej rozbudowany aparat pojęciowy pozwalający badać różnorakie konfiguracje relacji między costs i benefits. Artykuł próbuje wypełnić tę lukę: wyróżnione w nim zostały różne interpretacje przepisów prawnych określających warunki dopuszczalności eksperymentu medycznego; interpretacje te zostały również poddane ocenie. (shrink)

Are some risks to study participants too much, no matter how valuable the study is for society? This article answers in the negative.