The Place of Personal Moral Responsibility in the Ethical Conduct of Research: A Challenge to Ethics Committees and Researchers

Abstract

Abstract Herein it is argued that to achieve ethical negotiation and consensus in research, the focus of a HREC needs to shift solely from granting ethical approval, to a focus of how best to ensure personal morality of rescarehers and participants is not impeded in any way. Throughout, questions are asked about the impact of professional ethics or covenants on the autonomous moral-ethicality of researchers and their commitment to human participants and the wider community. The view that moral autonomy is possible in structured research is examined and, in doing so, the relationships between statutory authorities and development of moral-ethical and formally approved human research is considered. Finally, this paper proposes that it is precisely thc threat of unethical behaviour by researchers that has created the conditions for HREC. It simultancously acknowledges that too much emphasis is placed on gaining ethical approval by HREC at thc expense of researchers' taking and being encouraged to take personal moral responsibility and judgement for their actions. A view is offered that researchers' preparedness to rely and draw upon personal morality and personal moral responsibility will ensure the ethical conduct of research rather than subsuming that autonomy to the ethical approval of a HREC.