UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Hard paternalism, fairness and clinical research: why not?

Edwards, SJ; Wilson, J; (2012) Hard paternalism, fairness and clinical research: why not? Bioethics , 26 (2) pp. 68-75. 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2010.01816.x. Green open access

[thumbnail of 89664.pdf]
Preview
PDF
89664.pdf

Download (76kB)

Abstract

Jansen and Wall suggest a new way of defending hard paternalism in clinical research. They argue that non-therapeutic research exposing people to more than minimal risk should be banned on egalitarian grounds: in preventing poor decision-makers from making bad decisions, we will promote equality of welfare. We argue that their proposal is flawed for four reasons. First, the idea of poor decision-makers is much more problematic than Jansen and Wall allow. Second, pace Jansen and Wall, it may be practicable for regulators to uncover the values that a potential research participant holds when agreeing to enter a research project, so their claim that we must ban such research projects for all if we are to ban them for poor decision-makers looks to be unmotivated. Third, there seem to be cases where the liberty to enter the sort of research project Jansen and Wall discuss is morally weighty, and arguably should outweigh concerns of egalitarian distribution. Fourth, banning certain types of research, which seem on the face of it to offer an unfavourable risk-benefit ratio, would have unwelcome consequences for all clinical research, which Jansen and Wall do not recognize.

Type: Article
Title: Hard paternalism, fairness and clinical research: why not?
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2010.01816.x
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2010.01816.x
Language: English
Additional information: This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Edwards, SJ and Wilson, J (2010) Hard paternalism, fairness and clinical research: why not? Bioethics http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2010.01816.x
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Science and Technology Studies
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/89664
Downloads since deposit
541Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item