Ethics & Conduct

The goal of clinical research is to find new medicines and treatments to cure disease and relieve suffering. People who participate in clinical research are helping to advance medicine. The purpose of ethical guidelines is both to protect patient volunteers and to preserve the integrity of the science. Hippocrates gave us the first principal of ethical medicine: “First, do no harm.”

Some of the influential codes of ethics and regulations that guide ethical clinical research include:

• Nuremberg Code (1947)
• Belmont Report  (1979)
• Declaration of Helsinki (2000)