Abstract
This paper attempts to provide a broader view into the ethical issues surrounding the field of emergency medicine (EM) research. It starts from defining bioethically relevant features of EM and presents this field in the context of different models of health care provider–patient relationship. The paper also provides a short overview of the “post-Nuremberg” evolution of the main international research ethics guidelines relevant to EM research which demonstrates a tendency of liberalization of research on incapable persons. This tendency culminates with the exceptions to informed consent for EM research which is supposed to be balanced by other research ethics principles, especially a careful rationing of risks and benefits. This finally brings us towards a critical analysis of the minimal risk standard which is one of the main fundamental safeguards in EM research.
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Acknowledgements
I express my thanks to Professor Andrzej Górski as the organizer of the Warsaw conference, ‘“The Ethics of Research in Emergency Medicine” (June 2, 2006), where I presented the first draft of the paper. A further development of the paper was also stimulated by the research project sponsored by the Commission of the European Union, DG-Research, EURECA on delimiting the concept of biomedical research.
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An earlier version of this paper was presented at The 7th International Conference on Bioethics on “The Ethics of Research in Emergency Medicine”, held on June 2, 2006, Warsaw, Poland.
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Gefenas, E. Balancing Ethical Principles in Emergency Medicine Research. Sci Eng Ethics 13, 281–288 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-007-9029-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-007-9029-2