Ethics Opinions

Donation of needed organs to specified recipients has long been permitted in organ transplantation. Directed organ donation policies that produce a net gain of organs for transplantation and do not unreasonably disadvantage other transplant candidates are ethically acceptable.

Xenotransplantation, i.e., using organs or tissues from nonhuman animal species for transplantation into human patients, is a possible novel means of addressing the shortage of transplantable organs that can pose distinctive ethical challenges with respect to patient safety and public health.

Physicians who are involved in any role in research with human participants have an ethical obligation to ensure that participants’ interests are protected and to safeguard participants’ welfare, safety, and comfort.

Physicians must ensure that the participant (or legally authorized representative) has given voluntary, informed consent before enrolling a prospective participant in a research protocol. The obligation to obtain informed consent arises out of respect for persons and a desire to respect the autonomy of the individual.

Well-designed, ethically sound research aligns with the goals of medicine, addresses questions relevant to the population among whom the study will be carried out, balances the potential for benefit against the potential for harm, employs study designs that will yield scientifically valid and significant data, and generates useful knowledge.

Minimizing and mitigating conflicts of interest in clinical research is required in order to justify and maintain trust in the medical research community.

Physicians with oversight responsibilities in biomedical or health research have a responsibility to ensure that allegations of scientific misconduct are addressed promptly and fairly.

Physicians have an ethical responsibility to learn from and contribute to the total store of scientific knowledge. When they engage in biomedical or health research, physicians have obligations as scientists, which include disseminating research findings.

Data obtained from cruel and inhumane experiments should virtually never be published. In the rare instances when ethically tainted data have been validated by rigorous scientific analysis and are the only data of such nature available, and human lives would certainly be lost without the knowledge obtained from the data, it may be permissible to use or publish findings from unethical experiments.

Physicians who develop medical innovations may ethically patent their discoveries or products but should not allow patents to languish or use patents to limit the availability of medical innovations.