Hastings Cent Rep. 2016 Jul;46(4):27-8. doi: 10.1002/hast.601.
"The Ethics of Infection Challenges in Primates," by Anne Barnhill, Steven Joffe, and Franklin Miller, is an exceptionally timely contribution to the literature on animal research ethics. Animal research has long been both a source of high hopes and a cause for moral concern. When it comes to infection challenge studies with nonhuman primates, neither the hope-to save thousands of human lives from such diseases as Ebola and Marburg-nor the concern-the conviction that primates deserve especially strong protections-could be much higher. Coming just a few years after the National Institutes of Health adopted the Institute of Medicine's recommendations regarding chimpanzees, Barnhill and colleagues attempt to nudge the clarification and specification-one might say the evolution-of NHP research ethics and regulation. They assert that NHP challenge studies "are not justified by marginal gains in human safety or by efficacy gains that are unlikely to translate directly into saving human lives or preventing morbidity." How, in turn, is their standard-which, although stringent, does permit causing NHPs to suffer and die for human benefit-to be justified?
《灵长类动物感染挑战的伦理问题》，作者安妮·巴恩希尔、史蒂文·乔夫和富兰克林·米勒，是动物研究伦理学文献中一篇非常及时的贡献。动物研究一直既是人们寄予厚望的源泉，也是引发道德关注的原因。当涉及到用非人类灵长类动物进行感染挑战研究时，无论是希望通过这种方法从埃博拉和马尔堡等疾病中拯救成千上万的人类生命，还是认为灵长类动物应该得到特别强有力的保护的信念，都不能再高了。就在美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）采纳了美国医学研究所（Institute of Medicine）关于黑猩猩的建议几年后，巴恩希尔和同事们试图推动灵长类动物研究伦理和监管的澄清和规范——人们可能会说，这是其进化。他们断言，灵长类动物挑战研究“并没有通过人类安全性的边际收益或不太可能直接转化为拯救人类生命或预防发病率的疗效收益来证明是合理的”。那么，他们的标准——尽管严格，但确实允许为了人类的利益而使灵长类动物遭受痛苦和死亡——又该如何证明是合理的呢？
