What Kind of Research Ethics for the Arab Region?

Abstract

The international guidelines on research ethics rely predominantly on deontological prescriptions that emphasize respect for autonomy, maintaining privacy and confidentiality, and ensuring justice, as well as consequentialistic argumentation that focuses on maximizing benefits and minimizing harms and providing safeguards to participants prone to be vulnerable. These two main ethical theories represent the dominant ways of evaluating ethical behavior in the West. However, many find arguments from deontology and consequentialism difficult to apply and often inadequate to cover complex situations. Alternatively, the authors of the Belmont Report put forth prima facie principles of respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice and when these principles conflict with each other, one uses moral judgement and intuition to balance these principles in an effort to identify a morally correct of action. The use of these principles to guide ethical behavior is known as principlism, as originally developed by Beauchamp and Childress (2012). These principles have been regarded by many as universal and assumed to transcend traditional and cultural boundaries.