Abstract:
… This article asks why, despite decades of federal-level panels recommending no-fault compensation for research-related injuries, the United States has so strongly resisted change. I suggest that a central reason for our current impasse is that, despite consensus among federal advisory committees that there is an obligation to compensate injured subjects, the committees have not coalesced around a moral justification for that duty. Although multiple justifications can support and even strengthen a single ethical obligation, the reverse has occurred in this context. I demonstrate that the committees’ articulation of multiple ethical principles – including humanitarianism, professional beneficence, and compensatory justice – results in incongruent obligations that favor different kinds of compensation systems. This outcome, which I call “moral gridlock,” makes it extremely difficult to determine what kind of compensation scheme to implement. Recognizing that each moral argument for compensation creates a slightly different trajectory is, however, an important first step in moving toward a more systematic approach to compensating injured research subjects.
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Leslie Meltzer Henry, Moral Gridlock: Conceptual Barriers to No-Fault Compensation for Injured Research Subjects. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Special Issue: SYMPOSIUM: Revising the Common Rule: Prospects and Challenges, Volume 41, Issue 2, pages 411–423, Summer 2013. Article first published online: 26 JUN 2013. DOI: 10.1111/jlme.12052.
First posted 2013-07-02 06:49:53
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