Nuremberg code any such guidelines/laws in Ireland?

drunkmonkey

The reason I ask is would this be allowable in Ireland/Europe

UK aims to infect healthy volunteers with COVID-19 for medical research.
"In a move seen as pushing the limits of medical ethics, the United Kingdom announced Wednesday that it will fund a project that will intentionally infect young and healthy volunteers with COVID-19 in the name of research."
https://www.foxnews.com/health/uk-aims-to-infect-healthy-volunteers-with-covid-19-for-medical-research

I know it's related to Covid research but my question is more in relation to any disease or even action, can you deliberately infect or cause harm to people with their permission here.

Peregrinus

I'm not sure why you're mentioning Nuremburg here. The issue at Nuremburg involved people being experimented upon, subjected to harm or otherwise injured without their consent. The proposal here is for full and informed consent. It raises serious ethical issues but it's a completely different kettle of fish from Nazi medical experimentation in concentration camps.

In general, can people legally consent to the intentional infliction of injury? Yes, happens all the time. For example, anyone who steps into a boxing ring is consenting to what would otherwise be a fairly savage assault, with a signficant attendant risk of injury. And we accept this, even though boxing offers considerably less in the way of societal benefit than medical research of this kind would.

From a legal point of view, I think the issues to focus on here are: 1. Do the subjects give a fully informed consent? Have they not only been told all that is known about what is to be done to them, but also all that is not known? Do they understand what they have been told? And, 2. Is their consent wholly voluntary?

I think if you can check those boxes then, legally speaking, you're probably in the clear. That doesn't necessarily mean that the research will go ahead, though, since university and medical ethics panels generally set a higher standard than "not actually a crime". They might be advised that this can be done lawfully, and still decide that it ought not to be done.

The Fox News report that you link to is actually reheating reports first published last October in the Lancet and by Reuters. Since those reports came out several vaccines have been approved and brought to market, and this may affect change the climate in which this decision will be made — if we now have effective vaccines, is there therefore less justification forf sanctioning ethically questionable research like this?