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Ethical Issues in Prehospital Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2017

Eric A. Davis  and
Ronald F. Maio
Eric A. Davis*
Affiliation:
Division of Emergency Medicine, University of Pittsburgh; STAT System; Emergency Department, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Penn.
Ronald F. Maio
Affiliation:
Department of Surgery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
*
Division of Emergency Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Center for Emergency Medicine, 230 McKee Place, Suite 500, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
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Extract

The atrocities committed by Nazi physicians and scientists, in the name of furthering medical science, is an appalling page of the history of medical research. In the wake of World War II, the scientific community strived to develop regulations to guard against future abuses in medical research. However, a particularly sobering thought is that the atrocities in Germany were being carried out in a country that had specific regulations for protecting human research subjects: Nazi Germany was the only European country to have such regulations. A more in-depth look at these regulations reveals institutional or department heads were held accountable, but not the individual researcher. The lesson from this analysis is clear: individual investigators must bear the responsibility of conducting ethical research. Governmental regulations and Institutional Review Boards never can replace investigators who are advocates for the protection of human subjects.

The purpose of this paper is to address issues broadly regarding ethics and prehospital research, with a focus on the topic of informed consent.

Keywords

Emergency Medical ServicesEMSResearchPrehospitalEthicsInformed ConsentLegislationRegulationHuman SubjectsWaivers
Type
Research Article
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 8 , supplement S1: Research in Prehospital Care Systems , March 1993 , pp. S11 - S14
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 1993

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References

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