The devil in the details: Thorough assessment of evidence and ethics is needed in evaluating new HIV prevention methods

摘要

Haire, Kaldor, and Jordens (2012) raise important issues about the need to consider ethical values and trade-offs in evaluating new HIV prevention technologies. They express concern that partially effective prevention methods are not being rolled out quickly enough, and allege that decision makers' stance on these new methods is ethically problematic. However, they oversimplify three main areas of the debate: evaluation of evidence from clinical trials, the nature of researcher obligations, and the different levels of decision making-in research, clinical care, and public health policy-that flow from the evidence accumulated.