QUESTION FOR NOBEL PRIZE SCIENTISTS

 

The rapid expansion of biomedical research during
the past fifty years has motivated periodic expressions
of fear and alarm that human beings have been and will
continue to be used as unwitting and unprotected object
of scientific experimentation. Well documented cases
of abuse as well as the growing complexity of biomedical
research have undoubtedly contributed to a recent inten-
sification of institutionalized efforts to regulated
biomedical research. A number of these efforts have
resulted from the initiative of scientists themselves
to identify the demands of ethical responsibility in
scientific research. According to a widely shared
contemporary view, the classical declarations and codes
of ethics governing experimentation with human subjects
are no longer adequate. They are too general and, on
some questions, too ambiguous to offer sufficient pro-
tection of human subjects in a variety of experimental
situations. Regulatory commissions more eloborate and
specific guidelines, and institutional review boards
operating according to these guidelines are replacing
the classical and more simple (simpler) codes and de-
clarations. These commissions and boards increasingly

enlist the participation of non-scientists.

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Some believe that this evolution of the ethical
regulation of biomedical experimentation is, in general,
a wise an beneficial trend. Others wonder if these
trends offer an exaggerated degree of protection to the
individual to the detriment of biomedical progress and

to the disadvantage of the common good.

Is biomedical research too serious an enterprise

to be left in the hands of the scientific community?