Ethical Research

"At present it is a rare person that emerges from medical training with his or her humanity intact." -- Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 261, p. 2011, (1989)

Studies on human subjects have gone through history from the very best to the very worst. One can remember the experiments performed during World War II on prisoners by the Japanese in their constant effort to speed up Japan's development of biological weapons; those experiments conducted by the Nazis in concentration camps to further medical knowledge, and those funded by the American administration to develop therapy for syphilis and weapons during the Cold War. The list of atrocities could go on to illustrate the episodes of history where human rights have been so violently breached by governments and immoral individuals.

To protect human rights, international ethical codes have been endorsed and enforced by many nations. For example, the codes of Nuremberg, the Helsinki Accords and national ethical principles stipulate that the safety, well-being and rights of individuals take precedence over research interests. Despite recent ethical concerns, questionable experiments continue to run across the world in the secret chambers of hospitals, but also in places where laws are more permissive, such as African countries, which have become a favorite experimental field for the pharmaceutical industry.

On the other hand, ethical research on human subjects (individuals have to sign an inform consent) has led to some of the greatest advancements in all fields of medicine. From vaccines and surgery to new medications, medical discoveries and their refinements are generally tested on a small sample of human subjects before they reach the market. For example, X-rays, antisepsis, angioplasty, and surgery like early use of anesthesia, vaccination and cancer therapy have derived from human studies. Most recently, the human genome project, the new approaches of proteomics, pharmaco and toxicogenomics, and new imaging techniques, offer unprecedented opportunities to investigate further the human body and its diseases.

Consequently, the need for volunteers in basic and clinical research is increasing, the demand for human tissue also, as animal-based research becomes ever more irrelevant, an outdated episode of medical history.

It is highly desired and conceivable that no animal testing will be needed to introduce new medicines in the future; through the force of intelligence combined with new technologies, today’s generations already formulate and apply new ethical principles to liberate the world of such “necessary” evil, while protecting people’s rights.