PPA 691 Seminar in Public Policy Analysis

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PPA 691 Seminar in Public Policy Analysis

• Lecture 1d The Belmont Report

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Boundaries between Research and Practice

• Practice refers to interventions that are
  designed solely to enhance the well-being of an
  individual patient or client and that have a
  reasonable expectation of success.

3
Boundaries between Research and Practice

• Research designates an activity designed to
  test a hypothesis, permit conclusions to be
  drawn, and thereby to contribute to generalizable
  knowledge.

4
Basic Ethical Principles

• Respect for persons.
• Individuals should be treated as autonomous
  agents.
• Persons with diminished capacity are entitled to
  protection.

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Basic Ethical Principles

• Beneficence (making efforts to secure their
  well-being).
• Do not harm.
• Maximize possible benefits and minimize possible
  harms.

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Basic Ethical Principles

• Justice (who ought to receive the benefits of
  research and bear its burdens).
• Possible criteria (equal share, individual need,
  individual effort, societal contribution, merit).
• Avoid systematic subject selection because of
  availability, compromised position, or
  manipulability.
• Avoid research results that may only go to those
  who can afford them or involve subjects unlikely
  to receive the benefits of subsequent
  applications.

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Applications

• Informed consent (Respect for persons).
• Information.
• Comprehension.
• Voluntariness.

8
Applications

• Risk/benefit assessment (Beneficence).
• The nature and scope of risks and benefits.
• The probabilities and magnitudes of potential
  risks and benefits.
• The systematic assessment of risks and benefits.
• Determination of the validity of the
  presuppositions of the research
• Nature, probability, and magnitude of risk should
  be distinguished with clarity.
• Reasonableness of risk and benefit probabilities.

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Applications

• Risk/benefit assessment (Beneficence).
• Application of several principles.
• Brutal or inhumane treatment of human subjects is
  never morally justified.
• Risk should be reduced to those necessary to
  achieve the research objective.
• When research involves serious risk, review
  committees must be insistent on justification for
  the risk.
• When vulnerable populations are involved, the
  appropriateness of involving them should itself
  be demonstrate.
• Relevant risks and benefits must be thoroughly
  arrayed in documents and procedures used in the
  informed consent process.

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Applications

• Selection of subjects (justice).
• Fair procedures for the selection of research
  subjects.
• Individual justice in the selection of subjects
  would require that researchers exhibit fairness.
• Social justice requires that distinction be drawn
  between classes of subjects that ought, and ought
  not, to participate in any particular kind of
  research, based on the ability of members of that
  class to bear burdens and on the appropriateness
  of placing further burdens on already burdened
  persons.