The Safety and Ethics of Clinical Research
Finding new medicines to cure disease and relieve suffering benefits mankind. People who volunteer for clinical trials are helping to advance medicine.
The principles we look to safeguard research and trial volunteers go back as far as ancient times. Hippocrates gave us the first principal of ethical medicine: First, do no harm.
Nations around the world have worked continuously to establish and enforce rules of ethical research practice to protect those who volunteer in clinical trials.
The Nuremburg Code cites four principles of critical importance for the conduct of ethical clinical research. The four principles for the conduct of ethical clinical research are:
Informed consent so volunteers understand the risks and freely consent to participate.
- The study must be done by qualified researchers and follow an appropriate research design.
The potential benefits must outweigh the risk
Volunteers are free to end their participation at any time during the study without penalty. In 1979, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research published its recommendations for ethical research practices. The document known as the Belmont Report added that all clinical research must be conducted with: Respect for persons and beneficence- the will "to do good" and justice.
The clinical trial volunteers come first, so scientists around the world continue to evaluate the best ways to ensure that the principles of ethical research are followed.