Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

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Ethical research and theories assign great importance to the role of intention in passing moral judgments about individuals’ actions. The doctrine of double effect is among ethical disciplines that differentiate between controversial medical situations such as end of life care or abortion, and intentional, premeditated damage, in that they consider the former impermissible and the latter permissible under specific circumstances. The present paper was conducted to investigate the role of intention in judging a person’s actions, and to provide empirical evidence for the doctrine of double effect. 200 students were asked to evaluate the morality of two situations: in the first situation, one person needs to be killed so that five other persons can be saved. In the second, the killing of one person is the side effect of saving five others. Data analysis was performed based on frequency, averages and ANOVAs using SPSS statistical software version 16. The analysis indicated completely different responses to these two situations: in the first situation most respondents (62.3%) considered the act of killing the one person unethical, while in the second situation the majority of respondents (60.6%) considered the act that would result in the one person getting killed as ethical. The findings of the present paper highlighted the role of intention in passing moral judgments and provided empirical evidence in support of the doctrine of double effect. This research also demonstrated that the attitude of theorists about the role of intention in moral judgments is consistent with the moral sense of ordinary people.

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More than two decades have passed since the establishment of research ethics committees in Iran. With many years of experience of research ethics committees, Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education revised previous regulations and developed “Regulation on the Establishment, Leveling, and Duties of the Biomedical Research Ethics Committees”. Following publish and notification of “Regulation on the Establishment, Leveling, and Duties of the Biomedical Research Ethics Committees” in 2014, research ethics committees formed in national, academic, and organizational levels. In this regard, due to cooperation of the Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education with the Iran Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, “the single article of the Act for Prevention and Combating Fraud in Scientific Publications” was approved in the Parliament of Iran in 2017; its executive bylaw was notified for implementation by the Cabinet of Ministers in 2019 and accordingly research ethics committees found a legal status in Iran. For promotion and update of the mentioned regulation and adaption to the Act, the secretariat of the national ethics committee proposed revised version of the regulation after obtaining opinions of stakeholders and several expert meetings. Then the new regulation entitled “Regulation on the Establishment, Procedures, and Duties of the Research Ethics Committees” was approved by the Iran National Committee for Ethics in Biomedical Research and the High Council of Medical Ethics of Iran in 2021. Structure of the committees in the new regulation includes “the National Committee for Ethics in Biomedical Research”, “Regional Research Ethics Committee”, “Institutional Research Ethics Committee”, “Biomedical Research Ethics Committee”, and “Specialized Committee”. This article introduces this new regulation.