Researchers in the human and social sciences (HSS) have been identifying serious inadequacies in the resolutions on research ethics for quite some time. Even though Resolution 466/12 follows a biomedical rationale, its scope was unduly broadening for all areas of knowledge. It has had major consequences such as the rejection or delay of HSS research. The discussion on research ethics is develop...

BACKGROUND Emergency departments across the globe follow a triage system in order to cope with overcrowding. The intention behind triage is to improve the emergency care and to prioritize cases in terms of clinical urgency. DISCUSSION In emergency department triage, medical care might lead to adverse consequences like delay in providing care, compromise in privacy and confidentiality, poor ph...

Although for the last 50 years, ethicists dealing with human experimentation have focused primarily on the need to protect individual research subjects and vulnerable groups, biomedical research, especially in genetics, now requires the establishment of standards for the protection of communities. We have developed such a strategy, based on five steps. (i) Identification of community characteri...

The four principles approach to medical ethics plus specification is used in this paper. Specification is defined as a process of reducing the indeterminateness of general norms to give them increased action guiding capacity, while retaining the moral commitments in the original norm. Since questions of method are central to the symposium, the paper begins with four observations about method in...