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The Physician/Investigator's Obligation to Patients Participating in Research: The Case of Placebo Controlled Trials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Kathleen Cranley Glass  and
Duff Waring
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Extract

Some authors argue that the ethics of medical care and the ethics of research differ, and that it is a mistake to conflate the two. They propose “that medical research and medical treatment are two distinct forms of activities, governed by different ethical principles.” This raises the question of whether physicians who are also clinical investigators may separate their role as physician from that of researcher when they are involved in clinical trials, thereby avoiding the obligations required in the physician-patient relationship. Miller and Brody suggest that medical training is to blame for what they believe is the physicians’ tendency to confound the obligations of research and practice. “Physician-investigators, after all, went to medical school” they explain. They believe that considering research with patients outside the ethical framework of the physician-patient relationship may be “difficult and threatening” to physicians who have “psychological needs” to consider the ethical obligations flowing from their relationship with their patients.

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Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , Fall 2005 , pp. 575 - 585
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2005

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References

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