ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a theoretical account, a frankly philosophical account, of that possibility. It demonstrates that the Nuremberg Code can be read as an attempt to address conflict, and that the shared experience of these conflicts provided a basis for the Code’s transcultural validity. On the contractarian analysis any particular moral code, or codification of law, should be analyzable as an attempt to resolve some underlying conflict. The internationalization of medical science has thus necessitated a globalization of medical ethics. Contractarians have characterized the non-negotiable goods as “rights”, or “inalienable rights”, or “natural rights”, or “human rights”. The chapter suggests that a historically contextualized, structural analysis of the discourse of “informed consent”, “autonomy”, and “rights” reveals that this discourse is a part of our global culture precisely because it serves the transcultural need to differentiate therapy from research and to assert the primacy of the former over the latter.
