Abstract
This paper provides a halting first step in organizing a set of ethical guidelines for the conduct of population-based research, surveillance and practice. These principles are not distinct from, but an expansion of, traditional ethics. Research ethics, which matured significantly from the Nuremberg Code through to the Helsinki IV and the CIOMS guidelines, nourished the individual human spirit. Ethical principles should have a similarly profound impact in the development of science and the protection of human populations in the 1990s and beyond.
