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Health Care Analysis
Published in: Health Care Analysis 1/2018

01-03-2018 | Original Article

Examining the Social Benefits Principle in Research with Human Participants

Author: David B. Resnik

Published in: Health Care Analysis | Issue 1/2018

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Abstract

The idea that research with human participants should benefit society has become firmly entrenched in various regulations, policies, and guidelines, but there has been little in-depth analysis of this ethical principle in the bioethics literature. In this paper, I distinguish between strong and weak versions and the social benefits principle and examine six arguments for it. I argue that while it is always ethically desirable for research with human subjects to offer important benefits to society (or the public), the reasonable expectation of substantial public benefit should be a necessary condition for regarding research as ethical only when (a) it imposes more than minimal risks on non-consenting subjects; or (b) it is supported by public resources.
Footnotes
1
The interpretation of “minimal risk” has been controversial but I will not explore that issue here [36, 44‐46].
 
2
It is worth noting that some versions of utilitarianism and Christian ethics may also imply strong duties to sacrifice our own well-being for the sake of others. For example, Singer [42] argues that our obligation to help others implies that we should be willing to bring our own well-being down to the level of those who are worse-off than we are. If there are people starving in the world, we should give them aid until our own well-being is not greater than theirs [42]. Others argue that Singer’s view is too demanding and moralistic. Our duties to help others are not as extensive as Singer supposes [15].
 
3
Beneficent actions are morally required when you have fiduciary relationships to other people. For example, parents have fiduciary obligations to benefit their children and doctors have fiduciary obligations to benefit their patients. The beneficence argument focuses on our obligations to help individuals we do not have fiduciary relationships with.
 
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Metadata
Title
Examining the Social Benefits Principle in Research with Human Participants
Author
David B. Resnik
Publication date
01-03-2018
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Health Care Analysis / Issue 1/2018
Print ISSN: 1065-3058
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3394
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10728-016-0326-2

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