What Are the Ethical Problems Raised by the Increase of Cognitive Capabilities in the Defence Structure: The French Legal Structure, the Ethical Position of the French Military Health Service

All contemporary discussions concerning the ethics of human experimentation are grounded in the Nuremberg Code (Macklin, 1992) which listed what for many are the basic principles underlying the ethical conduct of human research. By law all scientific researches that use human research volunteers are governed by regulations prescribing the ethical treatment of these volunteers (Jones, 1993). The present purpose concerns what Ethics is in order to discuss about how military researches are directly affected by these regulations. They particularly concern neurosciences and precisely how to improve cognition for military individuals. Main arsenal was discussed according the risk-benefit balance. Furthermore, implications for medical reflexion were proposed. The French law prescribing the ethical principles for conducting research on humans as animals have been successively defined in accordance with European texts (French Public Health Code, 1994, 2004; Favre, Vallet, Renaudeau et al., 2004). All of these have consequences for conducting the French biomedical research for the defence.