Abadie Roberto
Narrat Inq Bioeth. 2017;7(1):71-77. doi: 10.1353/nib.2017.0019.
Hundreds of thousands of clinical trials are conducted annually around the world, working to further scientific knowledge and expand medical treatment. At the same time, clinical trials also present novel challenges to researchers who have access to large pools of research participants and are routinely approached by pharmaceutical companies seeking to recruit subjects for clinical trials. This case study discusses the ethical dilemmas faced by a community health investigator who received an invitation to enroll people who inject drugs (PWID) into a clinical trial of a drug that promised a new treatment option for Hepatitis C. The author elaborates on the ethical tensions that he confronted between "doing good" and "avoiding harm. The paper suggests that issues of distributive justice should also be considered, particularly when the drugs being tested might eventually command prices that place them out of reach of the population enrolled in the trial. This case does not attempt to provide an ethical road map to assist researchers in similar circumstances, but rather to illustrate some of the considerations involved in making a decision about whether or not to participate in clinical trials research.
全球每年都会开展数十万项临床试验，致力于增进科学知识并拓展医学治疗方法。与此同时，临床试验也给研究人员带来了新的挑战，他们能够接触到大量研究参与者，制药公司也经常找上门来，希望他们为临床试验招募受试者。本案例研究探讨了一位社区健康调查员所面临的伦理困境，该调查员收到邀请，要将注射毒品者纳入一种有望为丙型肝炎提供新治疗方案的药物的临床试验。作者详细阐述了他在“做好事”和“避免伤害”之间所面临的伦理冲突。本文认为，还应考虑分配正义问题，尤其是当所测试的药物最终定价可能使参与试验的人群无力承担时。本案例并非试图提供一份伦理路线图来帮助处于类似情况的研究人员，而是为了说明在决定是否参与临床试验研究时所涉及的一些考量因素。
