Informed Consent: The Ethical Foundation of Human Subject Research

This essay thoroughly examines informed consent as the paramount ethical principle in research involving human subjects. It details the importance of informing participants about all aspects of the research, ensuring they can make voluntary, informed decisions about their involvement. The essay highlights the significance of participant awareness regarding their rights, potential risks, and the overall purpose of the study. It emphasizes the need for clear, understandable communication and the importance of obtaining documented agreement through informed consent forms. Furthermore, the essay references examples such as drug research and clinical trials, underscoring the ethical responsibility of researchers to prioritize participant safety and well-being. The author explains the multi-stage informed consent process, including diagnosis, social and behavioral research, and interventional stages, highlighting the role of knowledge at every stage. The essay ultimately argues that informed consent is a principled process that protects participants and promotes ethical research practices. The essay uses references like Bernstein, Brennan, Grady, and Mumford to support its claims.

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Informed consent
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Why the informed consent is the most ethical principle
Many researches involving human beings as participants need several requirements before they
kick off. One of the main requirements is the informed consent (Bernstein, 130). Informed
consent refers to the legal and the ethical needs when doing a research involving human beings.
Consequently, ethical principles refers to the moral standards that directly or indirectly leads to
ethical direction. Some of the standards that are considered ethical include honesty, acting in
good faith, fairness and accountability. There are several reasons that prove informed consent is
the most ethical principle as the rest of the essay is going to prove.
The first thing is that before starting a research that involves informing all the participants in the
research on all the aspects of the research. The reason for giving out all the information is to
assist the participants make a sound decision without any influence. The participant will decide
on whether to be art of the clinical tests that might take place during the research. Another
expectation of the informed consent is that the participants are at a position to evaluate the
importance of the research in their lives and the society at large (Grady, 40). The second major
thing is that all the subjects and the participants must be aware of their rights before beginning
the research. The process is one of the things that makes an informed consent most ethical
principle. Other things the participants need to be aware of include the risks as a result of the
research or study, the period the research will take, the aim of the research and the significance
of taking art in the research.
An example of a research that involved informed consent is the research on drug. Some of the
things that are considered in such a research is the safety of the individuals (Mumford, 515). The
clinical trials will involve various individuals and individuals. The researcher should not do the
research to attain his or her own goal without considering the lives of the participants. Therefore,

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before such drugs reach the market there must be an informed agreement between the producer
and the regulatory bodies (Brennan, 1005). Apart from the above reasons, informed consent
explains to the participant the policies of research in a simple language that they can understand.
The decisions the participants make are always voluntary and no one is forced to make the
decisions. After reading the documents, the participants have to sign the agreement to show that
they have understood and are in agreement. Research may involve multiple activities which
include diagnosis, social and behavioral research and lastly interventional. However when
applying all these stages in a research, the participants must agree in every stage. For example
they must know their rights the risk of the step and the importance of the step. After the
agreement is when the clinical trials can proceed. The level of knowledge that the participants
have at every stage make informed consent a principled process.

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Work cited
Bernstein, Eric R. "Informed Consent: Process and Practice in the Context of Office-Based Oral
Surgery." Office-Based Maxillofacial Surgical Procedures. Springer, Cham, 2019. 125-
141.
Brennan, Frank, et al. "Time to improve informed consent for dialysis: an international
perspective." Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology 12.6 (2017): 1001-
1009.
Grady, Christine. "PURPOSE AND RATIONALE FOR INFORMED CONSENT." Oncology
Clinical Trials: Successful Design, Conduct, and Analysis (2018): 40.
Mumford, Michael D. "Psychology of the informed consent process: A commentary on three
recent articles." Ethics & Behavior 28.7 (2018): 513-516.