Ethical Foundations of the Nuremberg Code and the Helsinki Declaration
The Nuremberg Code was adopted after the Nuremberg trials of German doctors conducting human clinical trials during World War II. The main principle of this Code is the obligatory obtaining of permission from a person to conduct research. It is obligatory to inform the person about the degree of medical intervention and the possible consequences. The Nuremberg Code is grounded on rights- and moral-based ethical theories, which will be analyzed in this paper.
Before testing, the patient must give their consent based on the information received about the methods of conducting the experiment, the dangers, and the possible consequences of the experiment. Moreover, during research, a person has the right to stop the process if necessary (The Nuremberg Code, 1949). These principles correspond to rights-based ethical theory since each person can dispose of their own body independently.
In addition, according to paragraph 6 of the Code, the risks to the patient should not exceed the importance of the experiment, which makes the human, and not the result, the key element of the test (The Nuremberg Code, 1949). That means that in conducting tests, medical workers are obliged to minimize harm to a person, adhering to rule-based moral ethics. Thus, the decisive factor for conducting clinical trials is the availability of informed consent from humans. However, this principle is efficient only if the person has a high awareness and public health level (Dirty Medicine, 2019).
Application of Ethical Codes to Clinical Trials in Medical Apartheid
Unfortunately, the quality of medicine and the level of public health in Africa are low. That led to Africans being exploited in medical trials by Americans and other researchers (Washington, 2008). Moreover, the experiments are often too dangerous, and their results and consequences are impossible to predict, which is contrary to the Nuremberg Code. The conduct of uncontrolled medical trials in African countries leads to social injustice in medicine and increases the prevalence of severe diseases and mortality among black people.
Hence, the Nuremberg Code established the need to obtain informed consent from a person to conduct clinical trials. That involves explaining the research process in detail to the subject, as well as the risks and the consequences associated with it. However, many researchers take advantage of the low medical awareness in African countries and use the local population for dangerous experiments. It leads to devastating consequences for the black population and high mortality.
References
Dirty Medicine. (2019). Informed consent [Video]. YouTube. Web.
The Nuremberg Code. (1949). Web.
Washington, H. A. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The dark history of medical experimentation on black Americans from colonial times to the present.