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A Normative Justification for Distinguishing the Ethics of Clinical Research from the Ethics of Medical Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Paul Litton  and
Franklin G. Miller
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Extract

In the research ethics literature, there is strong disagreement about the ethical acceptability of placebo-controlled trials, particularly when a tested therapy aims to alleviate a condition for which standard treatment exists. Recently, this disagreement has given rise to debate over the moral appropriateness of the principle of clinical equipoise for medical research. Underlying these debates are two fundamentally different visions of the moral obligations that investigators owe their subjects.

Some commentators and ethics documents claim that physicians, whether acting as care givers or researchers, have the same duty of beneficence towards their patients and subjects: namely, that they must provide optimal medical care. In discussing placebo surgery in research on refractory Parkinson's disease, Peter Clark succinctly states this view: “The researcher has an ethical responsibility to act in the best interest of subjects.”

Type
Independent
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , Fall 2005 , pp. 566 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2005

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References

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