Virtue ethics of clinical research

A widely accepted idea of clinical science is that it seeks the truth and that the knowledge acquired should be of benefit to patients. Therefore, as clinical researchers, we give response to two concerns deeply rooted in the human nature: The desire to know and the need to help someone suffering. However, the ideas and values that sustain clinical research, and take it to its most genuine objectives, are subject to numerous tensions. For centuries, medicine has been gradually departing from its anthropocentric origin to become a political, social, and economic instrument. It is difficult for researchers based in clinical settings to remain focused on human good when the clinical activity is distracted from it by so many issues. Currently, the lack of ethical references widely accepted by the scientific community makes the concepts of good, human life, or human health uncertain; we have been left with a reduced number of hesitant principles against the powerful forces of market and ideology. Sometimes, the personal circumstances of the researcher, including the pressure to publish or attract income, increase the constraints imposed on research even more. All these issues can blur the values that sustain research, undermine the objectivity, accuracy, and reliability of our studies, and can make the researcher adopt the role of a businessman or a bureaucrat, who conducts a type of research that is empty of its meaning. A thorough exploration of the ends of our work and its ethical nature can help rediscover the values and ideas that should structure clinical research and lead to a scientific production of the highest quality. Ethics in the context of clinical research is nowadays dominated by principles and regulations, [5] which provide a manageable, sometimes simplistic, idea of the good, and demand very little personal engagement from the researcher. Virtue ethics is rooted in classical philosophy and fills many of the gaps on the intellectual framework, in which research is currently conducted. Virtue ethics acknowledges that there is an ethical nature in all activities related to research (not only in ethical dilemmas), including the conceptualization of the studies, the distribution of work, and the way we treat the members of our team. Virtue ethics also revives the idea that all of us are naturally inclined to move toward what we perceive as good. [6] Virtues are the intellectual and moral qualities that we can acquire to define correctly and move effectively …