In "Rethinking Research Ethics," Rosamond Rhodes argues that everyone has a responsibility to participate in research ethics programs (Rhodes 2005). After discussing the moral underpinnings upon which such a claim might rest, this article brings up two concerns in response to Rhodes' claim. The first worry is pragmatic: Rhodes argues that the focus in research ethics should be on the hypothetical consent of idealized moral agents, an approach that is constrained by practical considerations. The second objection is that, in most (...) research studies, participants are paid, which undermines the accusation of free-riding for non-participants. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Contemporary research ethics policies started with reflection on the atrocities perpetrated upon concentration camp inmates by Nazi doctors. Apparently, as a consequence of that experience, the policies that now guide human subject research focus on the protection of human subjects by making informed consent the centerpiece of regulatory attention. I take the choice of context for policy design, the initial prioritization of informed consent, and several associated conceptual missteps, to have set research ethics off in the wrong direction. The aim (...) of this paper is to sort out these confusions and their implications and to offer instead a straightforward framework for considering the ethical conduct of human subject research. In the course of this discussion I clarify different senses of autonomy that have been confounded and present more intelligible justifications for informed consent. I also take issue with several of the now accepted dogmas that govern research ethics. These include: the primacy of informed consent, the protection of the vulnerable, the substitution of beneficence for research's social purpose, and the introduction of an untenable distinction between innovation and research. (shrink)

In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.

In this article the authors reflect on regulations which have been developed to protect research subjects and data in research which uses human subjects. They suggest that regulations related to informed consent and privacy protection are burdensome in research which uses human subjects. They argue that a new category of research risk must be established which informs research subjects of the level of risk that they will be exposed to by participating in the research.

Contemporary research ethics policies started with reflection on the atrocities perpetrated upoconcentration camp inmates by Nazi doctors. Apparently, as a consequence of that experience, the policies that now guide human subject research focus on the protection of human subjects by making informed consent the centerpiece of regulatory attention. I take the choice of context for policy design, the initial prioritization of informed consent, and several associated conceptual missteps, to have set research ethics off in the wrong direction. The aim of (...) this paper is to sort out these confusions and their implications and to offer instead a straightforward framework for considering the ethical conduct of human subject research. In the course of this discussion I clarify different senses of autonomy that have been confounded and present more intelligible justifications for informed consent. I also take issue with several of the now accepted dogmas that govern research ethics. These include: the primacy of informed consent, the protection of the vulnerable, the substitution of beneficence for research's social purpose, and the introduction of an untenable distinction between innovation and research. (shrink)

In this article the authors reflect on regulations which have been developed to protect research subjects and data in research which uses human subjects. They suggest that regulations related to informed consent and privacy protection are burdensome in research which uses human subjects. They argue that a new category of research risk must be established which informs research subjects of the level of risk that they will be exposed to by participating in the research.

Dr. Henry Beecher, a renowned Harvard Medical School anesthesiologist, sent shock waves through the medical research community and the lay press when he described 22 examples of “unethical or questionably ethical studies” by reputable researchers at major institutions in his now well-known 1966 New England Journal of Medicine article. Beecher concluded this exposé by noting: “The ethical approach to experimentation in man has several components: two are more important than the others, the first being informed consent.... Secondly, there is the (...) more reliable safeguard provided by the presence of an intelligent, informed, conscientious, compassionate, responsible investigator”. Beecher’s... (shrink)