Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T22:46:21.470Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - International research contested: controversies and debates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2009

Ruth Macklin
Affiliation:
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York
Get access

Summary

At an international meeting devoted to ethics in research, one participant from a developing country remarked: “It is important to specify that research should be conducted in developing countries only when it cannot reasonably be carried out in developed countries. Research should not be carried out in developing countries solely for economic reasons.”

A participant from the United States replied: “It's proving useful to conduct studies on allergy and depression in developing countries. The people who do the studies do them well. Do people want to discourage that sort of thing? It's going on now, with consent of the countries.”

These comments illustrate two responses to a question that has given rise to international debate and controversy: Should medical research be conducted in Third World countries when it could equally well be carried out in the United States or Western Europe? According to one view, the answer is a probable “no”:

We fear … a major increase in studies that could easily be done in an industrialized country, but where the participants are denied optimal medical care and the products are not made available afterward. The benefits to the pharmaceutical industry are obvious: potentially lower costs, less red tape, larger pools of “naïve” subjects and lower ethical requirements.

This position considers populations in developing countries to be vulnerable, and therefore it is inappropriate to involve them in research when the same studies could be done in an industrialized country.

An opposing view maintains that requiring research to be conducted in industrialized countries before initiating a similar study in a developing country is an unacceptable form of paternalism.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×