Medical ethics surveillance in the Armed Forces

Modern defense services depend on a policy of the vigorous promotion of research to ensure that they retain an advantage in any future operational context. Research involving personnel within the armed forces, however, has certain constraints with respect to contemporary, best-practice medical ethics. Service members are one example of a class of "captive subjects" who require special protection in the context of medical research. (Prisoners, students, children, and the intellectually disabled are other such examples.) The majority of national defense forces now have ethical watchdog groups--institutional ethics committees--that oversee research involving service members. Such groups monitor the special considerations and constraints under which subjects in uniform can volunteer for biological research. These committees audit particularly the ethical themes of confidentiality, equality, and justice. Themes inherent in medical research in the military include the standard Beauchamp-Childress paradigm of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice, to which are added the traditional military values of loyalty, respect, courtesy, and chivalry. Contemporary thinking is that the general principle of affording service members the opportunity to volunteer for research should be maintained within the constraints of compromised training time, national security, and operational necessity. Most biological research (and its outcome) does not in practice compromise confidentiality or military security. This paper presents an audit of the functioning of one national military medical ethics committee, the Australian Defence Medical Ethics Committee, and presents a discussion of its philosophies and influence within the broader military context. The Australian Defence Medical Ethics Committee believes that most research should, as an a priori condition of approval, be intended for open publication in peer-reviewed journals.