The primary ethical justification for conducting research with human subjects is to benefit society. This normative principle is stated explicitly or implied in many codes, guidelines and regulations pertaining to research with human subjects. For example, according to the Nuremberg Code, an experiment with a human subject should “be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society” an...

Using an approach developed in the context of human bioethics, we argue that chimpanzees in research can be regarded as vulnerable subjects. This vulnerability is primarily due to communication barriers and situational factors-confinement and dependency-that make chimpanzees particularly susceptible to risks of harm and exploitation in experimental settings. In human research, individuals who a...

This paper examines the role of equipoise in evaluating international research. It distinguishes two possible formulations of the equipoise requirement that license very different evaluations of international research proposals. The interpretation that adopts a narrow criterion of similarity between clinical contexts has played an important role in one recent controversy, but it suffers from a ...