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Moral Theory

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The Ethics of Research with Human Subjects

Part of the book series: International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine ((LIME,volume 74))

Abstract

In the previous chapter I argued that a review of the history of the ethics of research with human subjects indicates that the regulations and ethical guidelines have evolved in response to egregious abuses of human subjects and ethically questionable research. Society has adopted rules to prevent these problems from occurring again and to restore and maintain public trust in research. The regulations and guidelines form a system of rules designed to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects. Ethical dilemmas involving research with human subjects continue to emerge, however, because the rules do not completely resolve fundamental questions related to the conflict between the rights and welfare of human subjects and the goal of advancing human knowledge to benefit society. To be sure, regulations and guidelines can help investigators, IRBs, institutional leaders, policymakers, and concerned citizens address these issues, but questions remain because dilemmas occur when interpreting, applying, prioritizing, and revising regulations and guidelines. What is needed, I argued, is an ethical decision-making framework which justifies rules and policies and can establish priorities when ethical conflicts arise. This chapter will consider whether moral theories can provide such a framework.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There are also many variations of this thought experiment. In one variation, the five people are all 90 years old, whereas the one person is only 12; in another variation, the five are strangers, whereas the one is your spouse or child; and in another variation, you can flip a switch that will make a robot push the man onto the tracks (see Greene 2013).

  2. 2.

    Natural law theorists would be able to distinguish between these two cases. Pulling the switch would be ethical, because the bad effect (i.e. killing one person) would not be intended, whereas pushing the man off the footbridge would be unethical because the bad effect would be intended, since the fat man must be hit by the trolley to stop it. Virtue ethicists could say that pushing the man onto the tracks would be wrong because a virtuous person would not do this.

  3. 3.

    For a discussion of the other versions of the CI and the relationship among the versions, see Hill Jr. (1992).

  4. 4.

    For further discussion of these principles and their underlying concepts, see Beauchamp and Childress (2012).

  5. 5.

    The similarity between Beauchamp and Childress’ four principles and the Belmont Report’s three principles is not a mere coincidence, since both of these authors wrote papers for the National Commission and Beauchamp was a staff member (Beauchamp 2005). The Council for the International Organizations of Medical Sciences (2002, 2016) has also adopted the Belmont Report’s principles guidelines for ethical research involving human subjects

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  1. National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

    David B. Resnik

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Resnik, D.B. (2018). Moral Theory. In: The Ethics of Research with Human Subjects. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 74. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68756-8_3

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