Human research beyond the medical model: legal and ethical issues

Advances in medical health depend on non-medical, as well as medical research. When research involves human participants, it raises legal and ethical concerns that have come to be approached by reference to codes of research ethics. Many of these are centered on physician-patient relationships and the pursuit of medical science. This article considers a number of issues that arise from research that follows non-medical models of research, and applications of rules of ethical medical research outside physician-patient settings. In particular, it addresses health research in the social sciences, the exclusion of women as participants in medical research, studies that depend on incomplete disclosure of information to prospective participants and their deception, and public health research based on groups and communities rather than participants as individuals.