Collective ethics

Ethical issues and randomisation There are ethical issues with randomisation. There are two t)rpes of ethics which are associated with human, medical research - individual and collective ethics. Individual ethics recognises the primacy of the individual and is aimed at doing what is best for the subjects in the current trial. In contrast, collective ethics is aimed at doing what is best for all future patients who will benefit from the results of the current trial. Clearly, there is a tension between these two principles that is recognised in the declaration of Helsinki, which comes down on the side of the individual ... 

Patient databases with genetic profiles, e.g. for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, etc. may play an important role in the future for individual health care, by integrating personal genetic profile into diagnosis, despite obvious ethical problems. The goal is to analyse a patient s individual genetic profile and compare it with a collection of reference profiles and other related information. This may improve individual diagnosis, prophylaxis, and therapy. 

North American Regional Committee, Human Genome Diversity Project, "Proposed Model Ethical Protocol for Collecting DNA Samples," Hous. L. Rev., 33, 1431-1473 (1997). 

Although there are several ethical concerns with biobanks and other large-scale research repositories (Rothstein, 2002), the most important issue is informed consent. Participants in research involving human subjects must be advised of the intended research to be performed with their specimens. With biobanks, however, the future research uses of the samples are unknown at the time of collection. It would be infeasible to contact each of the donors to obtain consent every time a new research use is contemplated, yet IRBs are reluctant to approve the use of blanket consent for unspecified uses. One way to avoid this problem is for prospective sample donors to be given a menu of possible uses of their samples. Such a list might include research in mental health, HIV/AIDS, cancer, cardiovascular disease, or other areas. The donors would then have the opportunity to approve the use of their specimens for all or some of the listed uses. Other disclosures necessary to obtain informed consent include the financial interests of the biobank and researchers, whether individuals may elect to be notified of research findings, and whether it is possible for an individual to withdraw his or her sample from the bank (Rothstein, 2002). 

Further evidence to support the notion of a role for immunotoxic environmental contaminants in the 1988 outbreak came from two studies of laboratory rats carried out in tandem with the seal studies. PVG rats were fed the same two batches of herring used in the seal study, with a similar pattern of effects observed in the seals [63,64], However, there were additional indications of immunotoxicity that could not be evaluated in seals for ethical or technical reasons, including increased virus titers in a rat cytomegalovirus (RCMV) host resistance model, and reduced thymus cellularity in the rats fed Baltic Sea herring. A positive control group of rats in one of the studies was exposed to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, thereafter exhibiting an amplified pattern of the effects that had been observed in the Baltic group. The collective results from the captive seal studies and the laboratory animal studies were seen to implicate an AhR-mediated immunotoxicity, in which dioxin-like PCBs played a dominant role [64, 65],... 

From the ethical standpoint, a patentable invention or a trade secret is like a piece of real estate it can be sold once, but then the original owner has no right to sell it again. On the other hand, we might compare an inventor with spectacular skill with the owner of an apartment house who can rent out an apartment and collect rent each month. Similarly, the scientist with unique skills can rent out those skills as an employee of a single entity or as a consultant to several, but he should be sure that he is renting skills and not purloining trade secrets. 

As explained by art historian Therese O Malley, this approach to landscape design marked an unusual combination of simultaneously exclusive and collective values Downing s cult of domesticity and community promulgated an individualistic yet communitarian ethic. Although his theory has been discussed as reflecting exclusivity and elitism, in fact it promoted a community ideal, and the critical tenet that place could create community. ... 

Venous blood samples are collected from clinical subjects after approval by the regulatory authorities for the evaluation of medicines and the local ethical committees for the sampling and the experiments to be performed. The identities of the clinical subjects are blinded. The collection should contain samples of healthy infants or children of both genders and minorities, with at least five clinical subjects per group. If adverse event reactions are to be studied, the collection should also contain at each time-point of the study one group of clinical subjects who were reported to experience adverse events after vaccination. The clinical subjects are vaccinated intramuscularly with one dose of the vaccine at 3, 5, and 12mo of age. Samples are collected at 3 mo before the first vaccination and at 6 and 13 mo, with the second samples taken after their second vaccination at 5 mo of age and the third vaccination at 12mo of age, respectively. 

Fetal liver was collected after surgical termination of a pregnancy for social reason. The tissue was obtained under full Ethical Committee approval at the Institute for Problems of Cryobiology in Kharkov, Ukraine. Fetal liver was disrupted using vibration (Kravchenko et al., 2002). The single cell suspension thus formed was centrifuged at 1000 g for lOmin and the cell pellet... 

In addition to ARSAC approval, the protocol must also be approved by ethics committees in the normal manner for studies in man. The study should be conducted in between four and eight consenting subjects, in facilities where any spills of radiolabelled materials can be contained and monitored. Normally, subjects will be required to provide blood samples and to collect all excreta for a period determined by the known or estimated half-lives of the parent compound and metabolite. With cooperative subjects, recoveries of radioactivity should be close to 100%. Samples will be assayed for radioactivity and by cold chromatographic methods, and every attempt should be made to identify major metabolites... 

Plumwood, V. (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Roudedge, London Postema, G. J. (1987) Collective evils, harms and the law , Ethics, vol 97, pp4l4—440 Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA Rawls, J. (1985) Justice as fairness Political not metaphysical , Philosophy and Public Affairsy vol 14, no 3, pp223-251... 

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