יום ד' ,
28.12.05,
18:00 - 20:00
Sackler School of Medicine, Room 201
Dr Miran Epstein, The Academic Unit for Human Science and Medical Ethics, St. Bartholomew's and The Royal London Hospital School of Medicine, Queen Mary University of London
Research ethics committees were first introduced by the WMA (the Declaration of Helsinki) in 1964. The invention has generally been deemed to epitomise 'pure morality'.
Globalisation, Money, and the Future of Human Research Ethics:
Sociological and Historical Implications of the Warner Report
This view is currently changing. The report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees (the Warner Report) published in June 2005 portrays the functioning of such committees as utterly unethical. It advocates major reforms of the NHS research ethics committees system. Unsurprisingly, it deems these reforms to epitomize nothing but 'pure morality'.
An analysis of the proposed changes and their probable effects on the major stakeholders indicates that the reformed system will give rise to failings akin to those of the outgoing system. It will, however, differ from the latter in its impact on the stakeholders. Thus while the outgoing system has given each stakeholder a unique mixture of benefit and harm, the incoming system offers only benefit to sponsors and researchers but nothing but detriment (and false promises) to participants in research and consumers of its products.
In view of the discrepancy between the idyllic harmony imagined by each system (according to which the system works in the best interests of all stakeholders) and the disturbing reality of each, it is suggested that the social role and the history of human research ethics be revisited. More specifically, it will be argued that the Warner Report is the ideological reflection of a new hegemonic compromise evolving under the intensifying economic competition characteristic of the present stage of capitalism.
Department of Health. Report of the ad hoc advisory group on the operation of NHS research ethics committees. London:DoH, 2005. http://www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/11/24/17/04112417.pdf.
World Medical Association. Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects. 2004, Tokyo. Available at http://www.wma.net/e/ethicsunit/helsinki.htm.
מגיב:
זהר
רובינשטיין, פסיכולוג קליני, קצין בריאות הנפש הפיקודי, (מיל.) פיקוד
העורף