Ethics related to medicine and biosciences has four general principles:
Autonomy. People must have the freedom to choose whether to enter or not in a research project. Strictly from the medical standpoint, it implies the freedom to undergo a diagnostic test or a treatment.
Non maleficence. This is the old Hippocratic principle “Primum non nocere” (“First and foremost, do not harm”).
Beneficence. A clinical trial must seek the highest benefit to the hisghest number of persons.
Justice. No one should be excluded (or included) in a research project on social, gender or race grounds.
Here you can find links and resources to bioethics sites:
Sociedad Internacional de Bioética (Gijón, Spain)
http://www.sibi.org/
NIH Bioethic resources
http://bioethics.od.nih.gov/
Hippocrates:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/hippocra/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/
Michael Sandel´s Justice website, from the University of Harvard
http://www.justiceharvard.org/watch/
Personal website by Byron C Hall Jr.
http://my.core.com/~bhall/Halls_Ethics_Corner/
The Open Ethics Journal
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toj/
BMC Medical Ethics
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcmedethics/
American Academy of Pediatrics Bioethics Section
http://www2.aap.org/sections/bioethics/CME.cfm
