The Law and Ethics of Medical Research: International Bioethics and Human Rights
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2006.00585_6.x |
default reasoning. Pritchard does not examine evidential rules. It would have
been interesting to hear what he, as a philosopher, makes of the concept of ‘testi-
monial’ in the emerging American case-law on the right of confrontation, or of
LordWilberforce’s statement in Ratten v R [1972] AC 378, 387, that a ‘question of
hearsayonly arises when the words are relied on‘‘testimonially’’’, or, more gener-
ally, of rules on‘implied hearsay’. Unfortunately, he chose ‘to side-stepthe issue of
whether a n agent’s unintentional transmission of information, whether verbally or
otherwise, should qualify as testimony’ (p101, n 2).This is understandable for his
paper is lengthy as it is, but a loss nevertheless for evidence lawyers.
H. L. Ho
n
Aurora Plomer,The Law and Ethics of Medical Research: International
Bioethics and Human Rights,London: Cavendish Publishing, 2005, 158pp,
pb d50.00.
Medical research is now an international multi-billion dollar industry and the
focus of much activity, owing to medical advances in genetics and cell research.
With these potentially new ¢nancial horizons there are increasing pressures on
regulators to approve human trials a nd to ensure that these trials are conducted
ethically.The undercurrent of this book is the almost systematic failure by gov-
ernments, the pharmaceutical industry and courts to o¡er greater protection for
medical research subjects through the imposition of universal standards, such as
the Nuremburg Code andthe Declarationof Helsinki. For Plomer the solution is
the development of rights based cla ims, framed under the Human Rights Act and
international biomedical conventions tostrengthen the conceptof autonomyand
informed consent, thereby creating clearer enforceable obligations on researchers
and sponsors of medical research.
The initial two chapters chart the evolution of the legal universal norms of
behaviour in medical research and the imperatives that lay behind their initial
introduction.These ‘standards’ include the Helsinki Declaration after WorldWar
II (and its subsequent versions), the WHO Council for International Organisa-
tions of Medical Science (CIOM) guidelines and the Convention on Human
Rights and Biomedicine (CHRB). These are all subject to many criticisms, not
least their theoretical and ethical instability leading to their unequal and, in some
instances, unchecked, application. Apart from identifying the‘¢erce international
disagreements from within and without the medical profession’ (p 3) that have
bedevilled the negotiationof these consensual norms, Plomer highlights the‘con-
ceptual muddle’ created ‘glossing over the sharp ethical divisions.’(p 25). Refer-
ences to the sometimes obscure meanings agreed in subsequent versions of these
universal norms on subjects as diverse as the use of ‘RECs’, ‘placebos’,‘local con-
ditions’, ‘appropriate treatment’, ‘best current treatment’ and ‘best proven treat-
ment’ are illustrative and illuminating. Plomer contends that the negotiated
n
NationalUniversity of Si ngapore.
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296 rThe Modern LawReview Limited 2006
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