Philosophy 2715F/G Lecture 14: Healthcare Ethics – Lecture 14
Document Summary
A critique of freedman"s article and the concept of clinical equipoise. Miller and brody attack clinical equipoise by denying that researchers owe patients in. If there is no duty of care in research, then there is no dilemma requiring clinical equipoise such as a solution. According to them, freedman fails to recognize the fundamental distinction b/w the ethics of practice and the ethics of research: there is no issue in clinical randomized controlled trials. The goal or end of clinical practice is to improve the health of the patient. Doses of drugs may be manipulated, differing drugs may be tried, but these are only done. It does so through the provision of optimal medical care for the patient with the end of improving the health of the patient. The goal: to the production of scientific knowledge to benefit future patients and society as a whole. Clinical research is not devoted, even in part, to the personal medical care of patients.