Abstract
...A movement has occurred in the field of public or population health in which epidemiologists are prominent, to develop guidelines for the ethical review of epidemiological studies, including public health and preventive health care initiatives. This is fueled both by an emerging trend towards professionalism among many epidemiologists, and by sensitivities about prevalence studies of AIDS and HIV infection in particular populations. Accordingly, in 1989 CIOMS undertook to prepare guidelines for the ethical review of epidemiological studies, which have been proposed in the fall of 1991 for longer-term consideration by those they are intended to serve, including public health practitioners, epidemiologists, members of ethical review committees for prospective population studies, and populations of developing and developed countries liable to be studied. CIOMS has long had special interests in health care in developing countries and was concerned to ensure that perspectives of both developed and developing countries would shape the guidelines. In the course of this exercise, a number of difficult issues became apparent that challenge the understanding of research ethics developed in clinical research, and that are distinctive to population health studies....
