Enhancing Ethical Research

“Many people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong. It is character.” ….. Albert Einstein

New medicines, biomedical procedures and ways of altering plants and animals are bringing benefits to millions of people. However, these same innovations also have the potential to bring harms or to raise other kinds of ethical questions about their appropriate use. Human life, dignity of the frail and elderly, bodily integrity and ability to make reasonable decisions, rights to life and health are the fundamental values that are at stake. The study of the ethical issues emerging from advances in biology and medicine is called bioethics. The word is made up of two parts: ‘bio’ (from the Greek word for ‘life’) and ‘ethics’, so it is the study of ethics as it relates to living things.[1]

It looks at ‘what should be done’ when dealing with or taking care of people who cannot speak up for themselves (the severely mentally ill, small children, prisoners) and other living creatures. Bioethics is also concerned with questions about basic human values such as the rights to life and health, and the rightness or wrongness of certain developments in health care institutions, life technology, medicine, the health professions and about society's responsibility for the life and health of its members.[1] Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law and philosophy.[2]

• References

• 1 https://www.disabled-world.com/definitions/bioethics.php
• 2 https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/bioethics.htm
• 3 https://researchethics.ca/what-is-research-ethics/
• 4 https://ahrecs.com/resources/ethics-research-important-resources-david-b-resnik-2015
• 5 Goenka S. General Principles of Research Ethics and History. Module 3, Lecture 3 [Lecture Video]. Public Health Foundation of India, Indian Institute of Public Health, Delhi
• 6 https://www.bioethics.msu.edu/?catid=0&id=74
• 7 https://icmr.nic.in/sites/default/files/guidelines/ICMR_Ethical_Guidelines_2017.pdf
• 8 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3593469/
• 9 https://cioms.ch/shop/product/international-ethical-guidelines-for-biomedical-research-involving-human-subjects-2/