Peter A. Sy

The UNAIDS Guidance Document: A Statement Against Using People

This commentary on the guidance points contained in UNAIDS Ethical Considerations in HIV Preventive Vaccine Research (Guidance Document) presents an interpretation of the guidance document as a statement against `using people in research. In support of this view there is a discussion of selected concepts that are touched upon in the UNAIDS document and in other international guidelines on research involving human subjects. Even as we accept that the use of human subjects in research inevitably involves `using people it is important to draw the Kantian distinction and ensure that human subjects are not `merely being used. For us this means ascertaining at least two things ± that people are not being used without their knowledge and consent and that they are not being used in a way that has no direct benefits for them. (excerpt)

Research Ethics, Cross-Cultural Dimensions of

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by D. Tuzin, volume 3, pp. 13231–13235,