Ethics of Medical Research in Developing countries: The Role of International Codes of Conduct.

Paper by J L Hutton

Keywords

Ethics, codes of conduct, developing countries, medical research.

Status

To appear in Statistical Methods for Medical Research.

Abstract

Many statisticians work with an informal codes of ethics, and are probablyunaware of the existence or content of rules which have been drawn up to govern statistical practice. Medical statisticians will be aware of codes of conduct for medical research, and most codes of professional ethics have some dependence on evidence.Statisticians therefore have a valuable contribution to make to debates on ethics which concern scientific soundness, data and perceptions of risk. A lively debate on the revision of the widely respected Declaration of Helsinki, to reflect issues arising fromresearch in developing countries, particularly HIV research, centres on questions of study design, data analysis and assessment of risk. Collectively owned multi-professional work requires each of the various professions to take responsibility for the conduct of the research, and the impact that it might have. Statisticians share important responsibilities in maintaining ethical medicalresearch in all countries.

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Jane L Hutton
28 June 2000.