Skip to main content

The Bolam Test and Medical Ethics

There has been some debate about Medical Ethics.

Since Nuremberg there has been the Nuremberg Code .

In essence in non-therapeutic research doctors are not allowed to Harm human beings to find out what happens.

It is more permissible when the research is supposed to benefit the patients.

The Bolam Test (see link) is a test for medical negligence. If a doctor harms a patient when trying to cure the patient then this is OK as long as it is something seen as a reasonable thing by other reasonable doctors.

So, in other words, a doctor can avoid a charge of medical negligence by finding another independent doctor who says that it was OK.

This, however, is not the same for harming patients as part of research where the actions taken were never anything like to benefit the patients.

The goes to the nub of the arguments about the research managed by Dr David Southall (it turns out he is no longer a professor).

The evidence is from published work as well as secret reports such as the Hull report that his research harmed the patients (mainly babies) in it.

The fact that some other doctors think that it ok does not get him off the hook.
The question is one as to whether the risks taken with the health of the babies concerned was reasonable in the circumstances and given the potential information obtained from the research. This is a legal test not one of medical opinion.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Its the long genes that stop working

People who read my blog will be aware that I have for some time argued that most (if not all) diseases of aging are caused by cells not being able to produce enough of the right proteins. What happens is that certain genes stop functioning because of a metabolic imbalance. I was, however, mystified as to why it was always particular genes that stopped working. Recently, however, there have been three papers produced: Aging is associated with a systemic length-associated transcriptome imbalance Age- or lifestyle-induced accumulation of genotoxicity is associated with a generalized shutdown of long gene transcription and Gene Size Matters: An Analysis of Gene Length in the Human Genome From these it is obvious to see that the genes that stop working are the longer ones. To me it is therefore obvious that if there is a shortage of nuclear Acetyl-CoA then it would mean that the probability of longer Genes being transcribed would be reduced to a greater extent than shorter ones.