In November 1996, the Wall Street Journal reported that Eli Lilly was paying homeless alcoholics from a local shelter to participate in safety testing of new drugs at its trial site in Indianapolis.1 "These individuals want to help society," asserted Lilly's director of clinical pharmacology. The subjects, however, said they took part for easy money and free room and board. Although Lilly reportedly offered the lowest per diem in the business, it managed to attract poor subjects from all over the country. The medical director of the local Homeless Initiative Program said Lilly had created a "shadow economy" of paid human subjects.

The Food and Drug Administration should rethink its rejection of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Doctors must display posters or give out information leaflets detailing any ethical objections they hold on abortion or other contentious medical issues under new guidelines published today by the medical regulator.

Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say. From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.

There are strong parallels between the Biko case and the ongoing role of US military doctors in Guantanamo Bay and the War on Terror. Last year,2 we suggested that the physicians in Guantanamo force-feeding hunger strikers should be referred to their professional bodies for breaching internationally accepted ethical guidelines.

A massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the di