The principles of medical ethics and medical research

In this paper I discuss the application of the principles of medical ethics and of medical research to the case of children and others whose consent to treatment and to research is problematic. Public health depends substantially on the possibility of ongoing research into all conditions which affect the health of the people. Constraints on this research are therefore a public health issue. Moreover and more importantly the possibility of predictive testing and indeed of screening for health-relevant conditions is an important public health tool, and limitations on the use of this tool are of great significance to public health medicine. Having considered the particular problems created by research and predictive testing on children for late-onset conditions I go on to discuss research on those whose consent is problematic more generally. I conclude with radical recommendations for the reform of The Declaration of Helsinki and of the International Ethics Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects, prepared by the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS).     

The independence of medical ethics

Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - This paper discusses the relation between medical ethics and general moral theory, the argument being that medical ethics is best seen as independent from...     

The field worker's fields: ethics, ethnography and medical sociology

Sociologists who do field work in medical settings face an intractable tension between their disciplinary field, which takes a critical perspective toward medicine, and their ethnographic field, which often includes physicians. This paper explores the ethical problems that result from the collision of the two fields. While in the field, ethnographers are forced to choose between sociology and their obligations to host members, as they decide whether to disclose their actual research agendas, whether to ask tough questions or to reveal their concerns, and whether to give advice. The tension persists when field workers leave the field to write, forcing them to choose between competing interpretations and to decide what to reveal or conceal in the interests of confidentiality. Through these moral choices about what to ask, record or present to the reader, ethnographers shape the academic field even as it shapes them.     

The philosophical basis of medical ethics

After a short introduction on the status of medical ethics as a special branch of a more general ethical theory, I try to identify its particular principles. According to my analysis there are two opposite basic principles which individuate two conflicting perspectives, i.e. the principle of sanctity of (human) life, and the principle of disposability of mere biological (human) life. Current troubles in medical ethics are mostly dependent on the fact that we are assisting a change from an ethics of the sanctity of life to an ethics of the disposability of life, and I argue for the latter.     

Personal identity,possible worlds,and medical ethics

Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy - Thought experiments that concoct bizarre possible world modalities are standard fare in debates on personal identity. Appealing to intuitions raised by such...     

Medical publications between law and ethics

Medical publications are the result of an intellectual inventive effort, yielding legal and ethical questions related to medicine. Copyright's problems in cases of disputed innovation or plagiary are frequent. The Tunisian law has stipulated rules for the original scientific production. Medical publications are also involved in professional liability questions through the reported medical standards. Ethical guidelines recommend that medical research and publications must respect moral rules such as scientific integrity and independence. Respect of such rules must be more guaranteed by ethic committees assessment of the submitted papers. Each medical journal is under obligation towards its readers and must consecrate columns for them to allow exchanges. Transparency must be respected in the field of advertising and supplement issues edition.