Vulnerability in research and health care; describing the elephant in the room?

Bioethics
Samia A Hurst

Abstract

Despite broad agreement that the vulnerable have a claim to special protection, defining vulnerable persons or populations has proved more difficult than we would like. This is a theoretical as well as a practical problem, as it hinders both convincing justifications for this claim and the practical application of required protections. In this paper, I review consent-based, harm-based, and comprehensive definitions of vulnerability in healthcare and research with human subjects. Although current definitions are subject to critique, their underlying assumptions may be complementary. I propose that we should define vulnerability in research and healthcare as an identifiably increased likelihood of incurring additional or greater wrong. In order to identify the vulnerable, as well as the type of protection that they need, this definition requires that we start from the sorts of wrongs likely to occur and from identifiable increments in the likelihood, or to the likely degree, that these wrongs will occur. It is limited but appropriately so, as it only applies to special protection, not to any protection to which we have a valid claim. Using this definition would clarify that the normative force of claims for special protection doe...Continue Reading

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Dec 8, 2011·The American Journal of Bioethics : AJOB·Samia A Hurst
Jan 10, 2012·The American Journal of Bioethics : AJOB·Samia A Hurst
Mar 16, 2012·The American Journal of Bioethics : AJOB·Nicolas Tavaglione, Samia A Hurst
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