The Grounds of Ancillary Care Duties

Whether and to what extent researchers have ‘ancillary care duties’ to address the unmet needs they encounter among their research participants is a relatively recent issue in research ethics. Much of the debate has focused on ‘special’ ancillary care duties, which hold uniquely between researchers and participants. There is disagreement about the grounds and precise scope of these special duties, but they are generally thought to pick up where the general duty of easy rescue leaves off. But easy rescue is not, we contend, the only possible general ground of ancillary care duties. In this chapter, we develop a novel human rights approach to ancillary care duties that, like easy rescue, is general but that may differ from it in terms of scope and demandingness. Only those needs that must be met to satisfy the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life qua human beings, not merely qua individuals, fall within the scope of this human right.