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The Ethical Use of Evidence in Biomedicine

Center for Clinical Bioethics, Washington, D.C.

Valerie Miké‘s proposal of an "ethics of evidence" is an interesting, important venture into a little explored field. Miké‘s two rules (use the best possible knowledge and acknowledge uncertainty) have been implicit but need to become explicit in a world where information and knowledge have enormous power—especially in medical practice and research, where evidence is essential to clinical decisions, policy formulation, and dissemination of results. A fully developed ethics of evidence would depend on a still underdeveloped theory of evidence, that is, on some conception of the nature of evidence, the logic of its use, and the epistemology of discovery and explanation. Until such a groundwork is developed, practical guidelines are deducible in the ethics of data collection and dissemination. This article examines those ethics, suggesting criteria for the morally responsible treatment of evidence collection, dissemination, and use.

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