Published in BMC Medical Ethics
BackgroundA topic of great concern in bioethics is the medical research conducted in poor countries sponsored by wealthy nations. Western drug companies increasingly view Latin America as a proper place for clinical research trials. The region combines a large population, modern medical facilities, and low per capita incomes. Participants from deve...
Published in The New York times on the Web
Published in Developing world bioethics
Benefit sharing aims to achieve an equitable exchange between the granting of access to a genetic resource and the provision of compensation. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is the only international legal instrument setting out obligations for sharing the benefits derived from the u...
Published in Developing world bioethics
In this article, we will first give a historic overview of the concept of benefit sharing and its appearance in official agreements, particularly with respect to crop genetic resources. It will become clear that, at present, benefit sharing is primarily considered as an instrument of compensation or exchange, and thus refers to commutative justice....
Published in Developing world bioethics
Published in Developing world bioethics
Most pharmaceutical research carried out today is focused on the treatment and management of the lifestyle diseases of the developed world. Diseases that affect mainly poor people are neglected in research advancements in treatment because they cannot generate large financial returns on research and development costs. Benefit sharing arrangements f...
Published in Developing world bioethics
This paper examines the concept of biopiracy, which initially emerged to challenge various aspects of the regime for intellectual property rights (IPR) in living organisms, as well as related aspects pertaining to the ownership and apportioning of benefits from 'genetic resources' derived from the world's biodiversity. This paper proposes that we t...
Published in Developing world bioethics
The aim of this paper is to show that any process of benefit sharing that does not guarantee the representation and participation of women in the decision-making process, as well as in the distribution of benefits, contravenes a central demand of social justice. It is argued that women, particularly in developing countries, can be excluded from ben...
Published in The New York times magazine
Published in Bioethics
Accepting the claim that the living have some moral duties with regard to dead bodies, this paper explores those duties and how they bear on the popular travelling exhibition Bodyworlds. I argue that the concept of informed consent presupposes substantial duties to the dead, namely duties that reckon with the meaning of the act in question. An atti...
