One of the cornerstones of ethical research is to protect participants from exploitation
[
[1]
]. Exploitation occurs when investigators, sponsors or others take unfair advantage
of participants by failing to provide them with sufficient benefits given the burdens
and risks they face (Table 1). For example, one of the paradigm cases of exploitation occurs when a pharmaceutical
company earns billions in profit from a new drug that was tested in poor individuals
who receive no benefits as a result of their participation.
Table 1Conception of exploitation in clinical research
[2]
.| Following Wertheimer
[3]
, we are concerned with the potential for exploitation of research participants understood
as “A exploits B when A takes ‘unfair advantage’ of B”. Exploitation in this sense is transaction specific and concerns the outcome of
individual transactions. This account allows for the possibility that a person may
be exploited even though she consents to the transaction and also benefits from it.
Vulnerability, is neither necessary nor sufficient for exploitation. |
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 14, 2016
Accepted:
June 21,
2016
Received:
June 20,
2016
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
