Ethical challenges and responses in harm reduction research: a critique of applied communitarian ethics.

摘要

To assert that harm reduction is value neutral is to adopt a fictional position. The choice to promote a harm reduction approach is value-laden. Those favouring harm reduction policies and programmes must believe that the state has a role in providing services to those who use drugs. It is likely that harm reduction practitioners will not generally be found in the camp of drug prohibitionists. They opt to work with certain populations whose behaviours are often stigmatised. Moral and political choices are unavoidable. But what are these to be and what frameworks are they to be informed by?