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conferenceseries.com
Volume 7, Issue 5 (Suppl) J Clin Trials, an open access journal
ISSN:2167-0870 Clinical Trials 2017
September 11-13, 2017
September 11-13, 2017 San Antonio, USA
4th International Conference on
Cl inical Tr ial s
Equipoise: The guiding ethical principle pertaining to randomized clinical trials
Scott Gelfand
Oklahoma State University, USA
In 1972, Charles Fried, in Medical Experimentation: Personal Integrity and Social Policy asserted that physician-researchers
have an ethical obligation to be in a state of equipoise during all stages of randomized clinical trials. Fried’s equipoise
requirement dictates that a physician engaged in research must not believe that one experimental arm of a randomized clinical
trial is better or more efficacious than the other arms (must be in a state of equipoise). Although the equipoise requirement has
been modified over the course of the last 45 years, the equipoise requirement is currently the fundamental or guiding principle
concerning the ethics of enrolling patients in randomized clinical trials. In this talk I will discuss the ethical foundation for the
equipoise requirement, what is the current equipoise requirement and ethical/practical problems associated with the equipoise
requirement.
Biography
Scott Gelfand received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Maryland and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He is a tenured professor and
Head of the Department of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University. His research is focused primarily on issues in biomedical ethics and research ethics. In 2010
he received an NSF grant to develop a novel research ethics course for scientists and engineers.
Scott Gelfand, J Clin Trials 2017, 7:5 (Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2167-0870-C1-019