Commentary: Ethical considerations in international research collaboration: The Bucharest early intervention project

✍ Scribed by DOUGLAS R. WASSENAAR

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 57 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0163-9641
• DOI: 10.1002/imhj.20108

✦ Synopsis

Ethical issues in international collaborative research are multiple and complex, and the applicable ethical guidance is diverse and sometimes contradictory ͑Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences ͑CIOMS͒, 2002; Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2002; World Medical Association, 2004͒. Research with children is similarly fraught with ethical conundrums, competing guidelines, and legislation. An intervention study, which is both international and involving children, is thus bound to be riddled with ethical issues. The authors of the Bucharest study ͑BEIP͒ ͑Zeanah, Koga, Simion, Stanescu, Tabacaru, Fox, & Nelson, this issue͒ are thus to be commended for publishing some ethical reflections on their study to supplement the basic research findings. Such ethical reflections are rare in the research literature. A useful and comprehensive framework for conceptualizing ethical issues in international collaborative research was published by Emanuel, Wendler, Killen, and Grady ͑2004͒. This framework attempts to embody the central ethical principles applicable to international health research in a format that is accessible to researchers rather than just to bioethicists. The authors ͑Zeanah et al., this issue͒ of the BEIP refer to this framework in their paper and cite it as an appendix, but regrettably do not apply it in structuring their discussion of their ethical issues. This could be seen as a shortcoming of the paper itself, as the application of the framework to this Commentary will hopefully illustrate. Each of the headings below represents one of the major categories of ethical discussion contained in the Emanuel et al. framework.