Responsibilities and Ethics

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2012:

Intensive Mode

Students should expect to undertake a minimum of 120 hours lectures, research, reading, writing etc. to complete this subject successfully.

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For the purposes of considering requests for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Description, Subject Objectives, Generic Skills and Assessment Requirements of this entry.
The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the disability support scheme can be found at the Disability Liaison Unit website: http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability/

Topics covered include:

Structure of Informed Consent documents
Meaning of Informed in the context of blinding and randomisation to allocated treatments.
Basic human rights in experimental settings
The human being as an experimental subject and unit of analysis
Data monitoring and safety committees
Exercises in complex ethical situations
Ethics committees structure; membership; terms of reference
Assessment of ethics applications (mock exercise)
Cultural differences in ethical viewpoints
Ethics under adverse conditions or under duress
Ethical responses to unlawful collection of data or specimens
Ethical issues of individual or volunteered experiments on the dying

Students who successfully complete this subject will be able to:
Demonstrate an sound understanding of the basic concepts in human ethics, including the principles of
Autonomy
Justice
Beneficence
Malfeasance
Understand the need for integrity in both research and researchers
Understand the need to protect human rights in research
Appreciate the requirement for informed consent
Appreciate both sides of the risk-benefit tension
Understand the impact of different cultural perspectives on ethical issues

Two assignments each of 2000 words (100%). Students will review an ethics proposal, identifying major concerns and problems within that proposal. Students will prepare an ethics application for a project within their workplace or other appropriate setting, detailing all major ethical issues that arise and their management.

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Students will be provided with articles and references that support the teaching program as part of their course materials

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

Students who successfully complete this subject will be able to:

Demonstrate an sound understanding of the basic concepts in human ethics, including the principles of:
- Autonomy
- Justice
- Beneficence
- Malfeasance
Understand the need for integrity in both research and researchers
Understand the need to protect human rights in research
Appreciate the requirement for informed consent
Appreciate both sides of the risk-benefit tension
Understand the impact of different cultural perspectives on ethical issues