ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the legal and ethical issues presented by medical research. Medical research is just one form of scientific enquiry which is generally thought to be a good thing. The distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic research is central to any discussion of the ethical and legal issues surrounding medical research. In contrast to the therapeutic form, non-therapeutic research denotes that which is carried out on volunteers and offers no hope of benefiting them personally. The medical research exposes the human research subject to a degree of additional risk. The chapter is also concerned with the duties of an ethical nature that the doctor/researcher may be held to owe to the research subject, and considers the requirement that the subject consent to research. There are two contractual relations that are relevant to medical research: there is the contract between the research subject and the researcher; and the contract between the sponsor of the research and the researcher, or investigator.
