Human experimentation

Abstract

Human experimentation can have different meanings: indeed, with the development of medical research, therapeutic acts have to be distinguished from acts of cognitive values. For each kind of acts, specific conditions of acceptability and specific protections of human beings have to be defined.

Human experimentation must be envisaged at different levels to evaluate ethical aspects: its scientific value, the risks (known and possible), benefits envisaged (risks and benefits have to be putten in balance), the populations implicated, etc…

The individual consent must be present too in the relationship between the subject and the doctors. In fact, is a real consent possible?

Instead to insist on problems in terms of medical research, one would have to insist perhaps more on the fact that the medical practice in general would have to answer more to ethical grounds and to scientific rules. It is the non scientific medicine which is immoral and dangerous, as well the medicine with financial interests, or also the medecine (often called parallel) without experimentation.

The main arguments must remain at the level of the dignity of the persons, autonomy and freedom of choice must remain the fundamental values.

Keywords:

• human experimentation
• consent
• intensive care
• vegetative state