A Normative Framework

This chapter answers the central question of this book. The fifth chapter starts with providing a review of the existing approaches. Afterward, it presents the suggested ethical framework for Global Governance for Health Research. This ethical framework has three main elements: First, a background of personal and subjective virtues that are the merging points of the traditional masculine and modern feminist accounts of virtue ethics; second, a core of principles mainly from the UNESCO Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights combined with the systematic framework that is named the NIH framework; and third, a place for situation ethics embodied in the crucial role of Research Ethics Committees and Institutional Review Boards composed of well-trained experts and lay-persons from all the involved parties and communities.