Exploitation in Global Bioethics. The case of research with human subjects in the Third Word

EDUARDO RIVERA LÓPEZ

Bangalore

Congreso; 14TH WORLD CONGRESS OF BIOETHICS; 2018

International Association of Bioethics

Background and Purpose: I focus on what Wertheimer calls ?beneficial exploitation? (BE): the case of a transaction in which a strong party (S) takes undue advantage over a weak one (W), but the transaction is voluntary and beneficial to W. One example of BE is biomedical research carried out by international pharma firms in Third World countries (Example: Surfaxin case).Ethical Issues: The issue I focus on here is whether BE should be legally banned, although it goes in advantage and is fully rational for W to accept it.Outcome of ethical inquiry: The thesis I want to defend is that legal prohibition can only be ethically justified in exceptional cases.Discussion and implications: The argument in favor of prohibition I consider is the so-called ?strategic argument?: prohibiting exploitative transactions creates an incentive for strong parties to contract in more equitable terms. This consequentialist argument may be plausible in some cases. However, there are at least two reasons to be skeptic: first, it is (prima facie) not morally permissible to use W as a means to improve the standards of social justice. Second, the state has no moral authority to prohibit individuals to perform behaviors (like BE) that do not directly harm others and that are beneficial to themselvesThe implications of this conclusion for bioethics, and specifically for exploitative research protocols in Third World countries, is that the prohibition of those protocols would only be permissible in extreme cases where there really is no other alternative to achieve higher levels of justice.