The purpose of this paper is to discuss the accountability for reasonableness and its four conditions. This explains the priority setting and resource allocation for scarce resources. In this article it is discussed that how the scarce resources in a developing country like Pakistan be allocated in health care. This is explained with the help of case scenario.

Experiments on animals have always been considered as necessary for scientific research, both fundamental and applied. In addition to scientific suitability criteria, this practice also must be justified from a moral point of view. This concern arises from the demand of our civilization that a certain moral value be recognized to animals. In this paper it is discussed in detail that how animals should be handled while doing research and what are animal rights and their uses in biomedical research.Bangladesh Journal (...) of Bioethics 2015 Vol.6 (1):11-14. (shrink)

Tremendous development in recent medical science and the consequent discoveries resulting in successful prevention and also cure of different diseases are shared by clinical research involving the human volunteers. Preceding the trials in the human subjects, and to ensure safety, the proposed drug and other interventions are either tested in animals (vivo) or in laboratory (vitro) to evaluate initial safe starting dose for the human beings and to key out the benchmarks for the clinical monitoring for the potential unfavorable effects. (...) These pre human trials might not necessarily protect against the untoward effects in the human beings as happened in the case of thalidomide tragedy, which caused disability and killed thousands of babies born to the mothers, those who took this medicine. Use of healthy human volunteers in the preliminary experiments or phase I clinical trials either reduces or excludes risks of subsequent undesirable effects in the future trails (1). Phase-1 trials are conducted in order to test the safety, reactions and immunogenicity of vaccines in volunteers. Novel treatments for the cancer are first tested in phase 1 trials enrolling the patients with advanced disease, who have exhausted the standard treatment options. Phase-1 oncology trials are the pivot point in the translation of new cancer therapies from bench to bedside. Nevertheless, these trials remain ethically controversial. The controversy stems from the fact that, classically, phase-1 oncology clinical trials involve first-in-human testing of experimental treatment candidates in patients with a terminal diagnosis, who typically have exhausted standard treatment options. Commentators on the ethics of phase-1 clinical trials make diametrically opposed claims about the prospect of direct medical benefit from participation in these trials-benefits that can be attributed to receiving the experimental treatment intervention. One camp of benefit skeptics, inhabited mainly by bioethicists, characterizes this form of research as lacking any reasonable prospect of direct medical benefit. They see an ethical cloud hovering over phase-1 trials, because the vast majority of patients volunteer for phase-1 trials out of a motivation to receive medical benefit. In the view of these skeptics, such patients therefore harbor a ‘therapeutic misconception’ about research participation. This misconception calls into question the validity of informed consent and thereby undercuts the ethical basis of these trials (2). In this paper, I will discuss the ethical justification of the participation of human volunteers in phase-1 trials. (shrink)

Asia is the most diverse continent in the world in terms of culture, religion, population size, finance, education, health care, academic research, general population skills, and governmental drug regulations. Each Asian country has its own unique qualities when it comes to attracting industry sponsored clinical trials. Factors that influence selecting location of a study site for a sponsored trial are mainly population size, infrastructure, education levels, and quality of health care, cost and drug regulatory platform. Conducting research in traditional countries (...) like Pakistan adds another dimension to the problems in assuring that research conducted in an ethical manner. The indigenous layer of the cultural values makes it even more difficult task, but this is the task that we are morally and ethically bound to shoulder. (shrink)

This article talks about both clinical research ethics and public health research ethics. Clinical research ethics are defined as set of relevant ethics considered necessary for the conduct of clinical trials in field of the clinical research. While public health research ethics is mainly aimed at finding out what is best for the communities and the populations rather than the individuals. Research ethics is mainly focused on the protection of individual participants and some of the research norms and accepted principles (...) may be challenging when applying in some of the research contexts. (shrink)