US military medical ethics evolved during its involvement in two recent wars, Gulf War I and the War on Terror. Norms of conduct for military clinicians with regard to the treatment of prisoners of war and the administration of non-therapeutic bioactive agents to soldiers were set aside because of the sense of being in a ‘new kind of war’. Concurrently, the use of radioactive metal in weaponry and the ability to measure the health consequences of trade embargos on vulnerable civilians occasioned new concerns about the health effects of war on soldiers, their offspring, and civilians living on battlefields. Civilian medical societies and medical ethicists fitfully engaged the evolving nature of the medical ethics issues and policy changes during these wars. Medical codes of professionalism have not been substantively updated and procedures for accountability for new kinds of abuses of medical ethics are not established. Looking to the future, medicine and medical ethics have not articul
This article begins with a discussion of current guidelines regarding Alzheimer disease research so as to lay a foundation for extending these guidelines to more explicitly include research on comorbid medical conditions. The article then justifies including persons with Alzheimer disease in research on comorbid medical conditions, using data from several empirical studies that show treatment of these conditions is not only beneficial to the overall health of the individual, but also may be beneficial in decreasing the symptoms of the disease. Finally, the article uses the framework of social justice as understood in the research ethics literature to examine the inclusion of historically excluded groups in research and to support the conclusion that social justice requires persons with Alzheimer disease to be included in research on comorbid medical conditions unless a robust justification for exclusion is provided.
Poor people predominate as a subgroup of those who take part in healthy volunteer research. They are subjected to minimised but unknown risks and unpleasant burdens so that the safety of new medicines can be evaluated. This is prima facie unfair especially given that the poor are often unable to access expensive medicines. Although participants in this kind of research often do receive compensation for their time, these payments are usually capped at a very low level. This paper defends a version of a reimbursement model for the payment of research subjects. This model is practical, would benefit those without an income who take part in research, and would make it possible for those in regular work to take part in phase 1 research.
Welcome to Jacinta Tan's research website. Jacinta works in the area of ‘empirical psychiatric ethics', researching some areas in the ethics of psychiatry using methods that examine the issue through research amongst people who work and live with the dilemmas. Jacinta Tan has a dual background of medicine as well as philosophy and psychology. She is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist who is also an empirical medical ethics researcher. Her research interests are treatment decision-making in anorexia nervosa, the ethics and law of capacity, the development of autonomy, treatment decision-making models and the ethics of research. What is Medical Ethics? What is Psychiatric Ethics? What is Empirical Ethics Research?