Page 150 - Human Rights

Faculty of Nursing
Adult care Nursing Department

The priority of the individual’s interests, especially when the person is vulnerable and ill, over the

interests of science and society recalls the primacy of the human being and their dignity as the

foundation of a pluralistic society.

Moreover, this concept helps materialize the intrinsic and no instrumental values of the human
individual.

The primacy of human beings over science is of relevance in scientific research, particularly in

clinical trials of pharma cuticles for human use.

This provision is established in existing national and international laws and guidelines on this

subject so that clinical trials can only be carried out on human beings when the results of

laboratory testing show that the risks to the person to be tested on are proportional to the benefits

(ethical principle of non-maleficence).

One of the main responsibilities of ethics committees is to weigh the risks and benefits considering

the best interests of the subject.

As an instrument of a modern society which seeks to defend the legitimate rights of patients

without reservations, ethics committees are an important tool for intra-institutional regulation
and anti-discriminatory practices, particularly regarding research on human subjects (National

Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research 1978).

Although society has a social interest in the advancement of scientific knowledge and in the

technological evolution of biomedicine, it should also promote equal access to all potential
beneficiaries of clinical research results (Nunes 2003).

As scientific research is carried out on a global scale, so the benefits must also be universal (Boman

and Kruse 2017).

4 Spiritual care:

139 Academic Year 2025/2026