MH Conversations and Connections Series – Lunchtime Seminar

Title: Helsinki Declaration: Past, present and future

Co-organisers:
Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit, HKUMed
Department of Emergency Medicine, HKUMed
Centre for Medical Ethics and Law, HKU

Registration Link: For HKU members / For non-HKU members   

Abstract:

The Declaration of Helsinki was developed by the World Medical Association to guide the ethical conduct of research involving human participants. First adopted in June 1964, it saw its most recent iteration in October 2024. The Declaration of Helsinki provides a set of ethical guidelines that are often perceived to be written by physicians for physicians, and was originally written in response to the atrocious Nazi experiments on human subjects. It refined, for example, the unwavering reliance on informed consent in the Nuremberg Code. In time, however, the Declaration of Helsinki extended its scope, including, for example, the welfare of animals. In its latest iteration, the Declaration even obliges researchers to consider environmental sustainability.

In this presentation, I will discuss the evolution of research ethics and roots of the Declaration of Helsinki, and critically discuss the recent version of the Declaration. I will invite input from researchers and all other participants.

Speaker:
Dr Zohar Lederman
Clinical Practitioner, Department of Emergency Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine
Research Fellow, Centre for Medical Ethics and Law, HKU

Dr Zohar Lederman is an emergency medicine physician with a PhD in bioethics from the National University of Singapore and formal undergraduate training in the humanities with a focus on philosophy. He is currently a Clinical Practitioner in the Department of Emergency Medicine as well as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law. Whenever he is not hiking or running, Zohar researches several topics in bioethics including loneliness and One Health Ethics. His work has been published in the top bioethics journals including the Journal of Medical Ethics, Bioethics, and Public Health Ethics.

Welcome to join us!

Enquiry: Please contact Mr Edison Cheng (mehu@hku.hk).