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In the Ruins of Babel: Pitfalls on the Way toward a Universal Language for Research Ethics and Benefit Sharing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2011

Extract

At the end of a paper on international research ethics published in the July-August 2010 issue of the Hastings Center Report, London and Zollman argue the need for grounding our duties in international medical and health-related research within a broader normative framework of social, distributive, and rectificatory justice. The same goes for Thomas Pogge, who, in a whole range of publications during the past years, has argued for a human-rights-based approach to international research. In a thought-provoking paper in the June 2010 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, Angela J. Ballantyne argues that “the global bioethics priority” in medical and health-related research ethics today is how to do research fairly in an unjust world.

Type
Special Section: Bioethics beyond Borders 2011
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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19. Declaración de Córdoba sobre Ética en Investigaciones con Seres Humanos. II Congreso de la Red Latino-Americana y del Caribe de Bioética - Redbioética/Unesco. Córdoba, Argentina; 2008; available at http://www.unesco.org.uy/shs/es/areas-de-trabajo/ciencias-sociales/declaraciones.html (last accessed 12 Aug 2010).

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21. See note 8, Pogge 2007:22.

22. See note 8, Pogge 2007:22.

23. See note 8, Pogge 2007:22.

24. See note 8, Pogge 2007:23.

25. See note 8, Pogge 2007:23.

26. Declaration of Helsinki 2008, Article 6: “In medical research involving human subjects, the well-being of the individual research subject must take precedence over all other interests”; available at http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/.

27. See note 7, Solbakk, Vidal forthcoming.

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29. For a more detailed critique of these conceptions, see Karlsen JR, Solbakk JH. Ethical endgames. Broad consent for narrow interests. Open consent for closed minds; Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, forthcoming.

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31. See note 16, London 2005:27.

32. See note 3, Ballantyne 2010:28.

33. See note 16, London 2010:41.

34. This notion, on which the fair benefit approach is based, originates from Alan Wertheimer, who makes a distinction between ”harmful exploitation” and ”mutually advantageous explotation”: “By mutually advantageous exploitation, I refer to those cases in which both parties (the alleged exploiter and the alleged exploitee) reasonably expect to gain from the transaction as contrasted with the pretransaction status quo. . . . I shall generally presume that mutually advantageous transactions are also consensual”; Wertheimer A. Exploitation on clinical research. In: Hawkins, S, Emanuel, EJ, eds. Exploitation and developing countries. The ethics of clinical research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2008:63-104 at pp. 67–8Google Scholar. An easier way of stating what is meant by mutually advantageous exploitation is to say that the transaction of benefit taking place between the parties leaves all of them better off.

35. ”The European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) was created in 2003 as a European response to the global health crisis caused by the three main poverty-related diseases of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. These diseases account for over 6 million deaths each year, and the numbers are growing. Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s worst-affected region where besides ravaging lives, they impede development and cause poverty”; EDCTP Homepage, http://www.edctp.org/About-EDCTP.2.0.html (last accessed). EDCTP involves all sub-Saharan African countries plus 14 participating European Union (EU) member states as well as Norway and Switzerland.

36. Figures are from the draft report Mapping African Research Ethics Capacity (MARC), a EDCTP-sponsored initiative from 2010.

37. See note 8, Pogge 2007:34.

38. UNESCO. Article 8, Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights; 2005; available athttp://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1883&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (last accessed 6 Aug 2010).Google Scholar

39. For a detailed analysis of this principle, see Solbakk, JH. The principle of respect for human vulnerability and global bioethics. In: Chadwick, R, ten Have, H, Meslin, E, eds. Health Care Ethics in an Era of Globalisation. Sage (forthcoming).Google Scholar

40. UNESCO. Article 15, Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights; 2005; available athttp://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1883&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (last accessed 6 Aug 2010).Google Scholar

41. These suggestions were first presented in Garaffa et al. 2010 (see note 7) and in Solbakk, Vidal forthcoming (see note 7).

42. See note 7, Garaffa et al. 2010; see note 7, Solbakk, Vidal forthcoming.

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