Abstract
In addition to individual prior informed consent, the issue of obtaining community-level consent is receiving increasing attention. This is stimulated by advances in the omic sciences, acknowledgment that both the conduct and application of research results have impacts at the level of the community in which research is undertaken, acceptance that a community can have a moral status so that it can be the subject of bioethical reflection and analysis, and the continuing attention to research in developing countries. The communities that arise in health care research take many forms and exist in a multitude of local, global, or virtual contexts. Although developing a single ethics guideline suitable for all types of communities is problematic, it is nevertheless important to engage in developing a framework of principles and approaches that can be applied to decision-making on community assent on a case-by-case basis. The term “consent” is reserved in this essay for processes conducted with an individual; the term “assent” is preferred at the level of the community. The reasoning is that bioethics considerations on an individual level are sufficiently different from those on the community level to recommend using a different terminology.
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Further Readings
Nuffield Council Report. Research in developing countries (Available from http://nuffieldbioethics.org/publications)
Nuffield Council Report. Public health: Ethical issues (Available from http://nuffieldbioethics.org/publications)
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Stingelin-Giles, N. (2016). Consent: Community. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_121
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