Between scientific application and therapy: the ethical consideration

The development of bioscience and biotechnology during the last thirty years exerted a tremendous influence on medicine. New techniques have risen and new kinds of treatment have been and still are introduced. The theories concerning the pathogenesis and the causes of disease change, while new therapeutical drug become constantly available on the market. The way in which new technologies and drugs are introduced contains more and more an experimental phase in which animals and human beings are used to test the outcomes of research. As a rule, these experiments are performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA, Helsinki 1964, Tokyo, 1975). The guidelines of this Declaration are concerned with the ethical aspects of those experiments which involve human subjects. Although the guidelines are intended to have a global import, it still remains a matter of fact that some of them are a matter of debate in several regions of the world. They seem to have a cultural background (e.g. respect for the individual) and bioscientists sometimes argue that fort this reason they have to be considered as non-scientific restrictions. On the basis of a general philosophical and ethical consideration, it will be argued in this paper that ethical guidelines belong to the heart of biomedicine and biology itself. It is the common interest of researchers, clinicians, patients and scientists to consider the ethical implications of research outcomes before it can be stated that any worthwhile knowledge is obtained. The implementation of monoclonal-antibodies in clinical practice can be seen as a sample of this argument.