Ethical responses to modern clinical trials on human subjects: a comparative perspective
With the modern advances and technological breakthroughs in biomedicine, scientific experiments involving human subjects had increased. Since the American gynecologist Marion Sims (d.1883), who conducted a scientific research on some selected African women suffering from prolapsed uterus disease,...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
Kulliyyah of Medicine and IIUM Press
2018
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| Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/67478/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/67478/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/67478/1/Ethical%20Responses%20to%20Modern%20Clinical%20Trials%20on%20Human.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/67478/7/67478_Ethical%20responses%20to%20modern%20clinical%20trials%20on%20human_SCOPUS%202016.pdf |
| Summary: | With the modern advances and technological breakthroughs in biomedicine, scientific experiments involving
human subjects had increased. Since the American gynecologist Marion Sims (d.1883), who conducted a
scientific research on some selected African women suffering from prolapsed uterus disease, or American
physician Walter Reed’s (d.1902) team who gave germs of yellow fever to 22 human subjects to test if fever
is transmitted by particularly mosquito species, as well as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that was conducted
from 1932 until 1972, or the scientific experiments conducted by Nazis of Germany on large numbers of
prisoners, clinical trials on human subjects have become part of the scientific activities. These and many
other scientific experiments conducted on human subjects had shown the extent of potential threats of
unregulated scientific experiments on human life. Serious moral and legal concerns are then raised towards
the morality of these activities. These concerns covered four major areas; safety, sanctity of the human
body, consent and validity of experiment. This paper uses textual and analytical methods and aims to
review Muslim jurists’ opinions on the permissibility of conducting clinical researches that uses human
subjects. The opinions of the Muslim jurists are then compared to that of bioethical codes and declarations
such as the Nuremberg Code, coined in (1947) and the Helsinki Declaration that was formulated by World
Medical Organization in 1964. Fiqh and legal literature on this subject is exposed, and the moral contents
of such writings are analyzed. The study is expected to come up with a comparative account of conventional
and Islamic responses to modern clinical trials on human subjects. |
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