The Belmont Report

The Belmont report

knowing

doing

What is The Belmont Report?

1. Who wrote it?

Informed consent

2. What were the considerations?

Assessment of Risks and Benefits

Selection of Subjects

3. What are the basic ethical principles?

Case study

Group Questions

Informed consent

Informed consent is the process in which counselors notify clients or research subjects of the risks, benefits and expected outcome of a research project or therapeutic approach. Informed consent is an ongoing part of the counseling process, and counselors appropriately document discussions of informed consent throughout the counseling relationship.

the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research

The commision was tasked with identifying the basic ethical principles that should underlie the conduct of biomedical and behavioral research involving human subjects

ethical principles

1. Respect for Persons

2. Beneficence

3. Justice

The considerations

when writing the report, the commision was asked to include the following in their considerations:

• The boundaries between biomedical and behavioral research and the accepted and routine practice of medicine
• The role of assessment of risk-benefit criteria in the determination of the appropriateness of research involving human subjects
• Appropriate guidelines for the selection of human subjects for participation in such research
• The nature and definition of informed consent in various research settings.

Selection

Justice is relevant to the selection of subjects of research at two levels: the social and the individual.

• Social

• Individual

Risk and benefit

Assessment of the justifiability of research should reflect at least the following considerations...

• Brutal or inhumane treatment of human subjects is never morally justified
• It should be determined whether it is in fact necessary to use human subjects at all
• When research involves significant risk of serious impairment, review committees should be extraordinarily insistent on the justification of the risk (cont)

Group questions

What ethical principle was violated in the presented case? In what ways could the violation have been avoided? Could you see certain parts of the case that could be present in current research? In what ways?