Randomized Clinical Trials and Public Interest. How Politics Precedes Bioethics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2008.i730.173Keywords:
randomization, clinical trials, bioethics, British health policyAbstract
This paper analyses the normative justification of the adoption of randomized clinical trials as a methodological standard for pharmaceutical policy by the British health authorities in 1946. Through a discussion of the interests of the different parties involved in the process (doctors, patients, pharmaceutical companies and the State) I argue that randomization was adopted namely as an impartial mechanism to allocate treatments, even if its statistical foundations were not properly understood. I contend that such justification is still valid.
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