A Statement of Ethical Principles

The Statement opens with a challenging description of the work of engineers  

Professional engineers work to enhance the welfare, health and safety of all whilst paying due regard to the environment and the sustainability of resources. They have made personal and professional commitments to enhance the wellbeing of society through the exploitation of knowledge and the management of creative teams. 

This is notably a description of a human endeavour it describes the activities of persons for the benefit of other persons. It should be noted that the Statement refers to the purposive social goal of engineering as being to enhance the welfare, health and safety of all . This is a very demanding aspiration, which includes communities beyond our usual boundaries and the individual persons in those communities. 

However, a fuller account of the ethical challenges and ethical opportunities of engineering needs also to consider why and how desirable actions should be accomplished. Such considerations are especially important if there is to be real innovation in the acceptance and expression of ethical responsibility by engineers. For example, it is not uncommon for an engineer s work to affect primarily people who are distant in place and/or distant in time from where the work is conceived and planned, far from the place where engineered artefacts are constructed, and even far from the place where completed engineered artefacts are located. An 

Ethical codes and statements of ethical principles can be read as sets of rules. However, merely to follow a set of ethical mles is not necessarily to act ethically. To really act ethically we need to be motivated by sincere intentions and more particularly to act on the basis of experience. Engineers know the importance of experience in their technical work, and the irreplaceable value of practical experience has been expressed well by Vernon Watkins in the opening lines of his poem Fisherman [10]  

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Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects The World Medical Association has developed the Declaration of Helsinki as a statement of ethical principles to provide guidance to physicians and other participants in medical research involving human subjects. Medical research involving human subjects includes research on identifiable human material or identifiable data. 

In 1964, the World Medical Association established a statement of ethical principles to provide guidance to physicians and other participants in biomedical research involving humans. It was developed to correct the perceived deficiencies in the Nuremberg Code, especially on physician-led research with patients. The Declaration governs international research ethics and defines rules for research combined with clinical care and non-therapeutic research . The Declaration of Helsinki was revised in 1975, 1983, 1989 and 1996 and is the basis for GCP used today. A summarised version of the Declaration of Helsinki is shown in Table 6.1. 

The Royal Academy of Engineering, in collaboration with Engineering Council (UK) and a number of the leading professional engineering institutions, has created a Statement of Ethical Principles to which it believes all professional engineers and related bodies should subscribe. 

This Statement of Ethical Principles sets a standard to which members of the engineering profession should aspire in their working habits and relationships. The Statement is fully compatible with the principles in the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser s Universal Ethical Code for Scientists, with an emphasis on matters of particular relevance to engineers. The values on which it is based should apply in every situation in which professional engineers exercise their judgement. 

It was noted in Chap. 1 that the Royal Academy of Engineering s Statement of Ethical Principles, in common with other modem professional ethical codes, is concerned with what should be done. This is also a concern of the Rule, but the... 

The research protocol should always contain a statement of the ethical considerations involved and should indicate that there is compliance with the principles enunciated in this Declaration. 

The statement s final points cut to the political issue of race, equality, and democracy social equality as an ethical principle does not depend upon equality of endowment among diverse human beings there is no evidence for the belief that groups differ in capacities for intellectual and emotional development differences within a given race may outstrip differences between races and there is no evidence that racial mixture is disadvantageous from a biological point of view.32... 

This example drawn from the U.S. federal ethics code only begins to suggest the amount of individual and organizational effort that may be required to conscientiously function in accordance with very detailed and complex codes of ethics that seem to assume most personnel require watching. An attractive alternative, and one that may only be feasible in a small organization, is a short and strong statement of principles coupled with a very careful personnel recruitment and retention program. 

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