All medical researches concentrate primarily on advances of medical knowledge and strategies for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. However, since most of the medical researches are being carried out on human subjects, they often pose ethical problems. Clinical investigations from which the human subjects involved may not derive any personal benefits include studies of physiological function in health or disease, investigations of new drugs, and the trial of new procedures. This paper discusses the ethical problems associated with medical researches, especially clinical investigations involving human subjects directly or indirectly. One general principle that has been wildly accepted is that patients or volunteers involved in the clinical investigations should be fully informed about the experiment in which they participate. However, ethical problems in those clinical investigations should be evaluated by the three major biomedical ethical principles, or the principle of autonomy, the principle of beneficence, and the principle of justice. This paper also presents the 'Helsinki Declaration' advocated by the World Medical Association in 1964 and revised thereafter several times as a practical guideline for the ethics of medical research.
Beneficence ; Diagnosis ; Ethics* ; Helsinki Declaration ; Humans ; Social Justice ; Volunteers

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Education, Medical* ; Humans ; Students, Medical*

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Accreditation* ; Schools, Medical*

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Coronary Disease*

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Adult* ; Case-Control Studies* ; Humans ; Risk Factors*

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Humans ; Male* ; Seoul* ; Smoke* ; Smoking*

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Female ; Humans ; Premenstrual Syndrome*

Schools of public health are graduate level higher educational institutions training students who will be engaging in educational, research and service activities in the field of public health after completing the educational programs. To meet this institutional goal, the schools of public health should provide diverse academic and professional courses and programs to the students based on their educational objectives. Educational objectives of schools of public health, of course, should well reflect the working definition of public health : public health is the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical health and efficiency through organized community efforts. There are 13 schools of public health in Korea an of 1999 including occupational and environmental schools. However, most of them were opened in 1980s and 90s, and therefore, do not have properly described educational and learning objectives. This paper proposes that Korean schools of public health should review their institutional goals and have clearly stated educational objectives. This also proposes development of standardized learning objectives of core subjects such as epidemiology, statistics, environmental health, health education and public health administration. Important units of these core subjects are also provided.
Environmental Health ; Epidemiology ; Health Education ; Humans ; Korea ; Learning* ; Public Health Administration ; Public Health*

Much of the working population in developing countries are engaged in shift work now and the number of shift workers is not expected to decrease in the future mostly because the need for continuity of production is increasing. Therefore, the possible effects of shift work on health are of particular interest, and in fact, there have been many epidemiological studies on shift work since the first world war. However, no studies on health effects of shift work have been reported in Korea, and the existing studies in western world have arrived at quite different conclusions mainly because the conditions of work other than shift work, such as age and selection of workers, work environment, and labor conditions also influence the health of workers. This study was firstly carried out in Korea to investigate the health risks related to shift work with 2,093 female workers randomly selected from three major manufacturing industries in proportion to total number of female workers in those industries. Differences of work conditions other than shift work in this study were adjusted by multivariate analysis. Major findings obtained from this study are as follows: 1. There were significant differences between shift and day workers in the distribution of age, type of industry, condition of noise and dust, regularity of mealtime, working position, and working duration. Shift workers tended to be younger, to have shorter working duration, to have more irregular mealtime, to work in standing position, and to work under more noisy and dusty environment than day workers. 2. Univariate analysis showed that shift work increased the Todai Health Index (THI) scores of digestive tract, respiratory tract, and mental instability symptom categories. Shift work also increased days of sickness absence and number of industrial accident per 100 workers per month. 3. Multivariate analysis that adjusted the differences of demographic, occupational and non-occupational health-related working conditions showed that digestive tract symptoms and mental instability symptom scores were significantly higher in shift workers than those in day workers. Based on those study results, it is concluded that the shift work has significant effects on some psychophysiological conditions of the workers and the effects are also influenced by several other personal and working conditions.
Accidents, Occupational ; Developing Countries ; Dust ; Female* ; Gastrointestinal Tract ; Humans ; Korea* ; Meals ; Multivariate Analysis ; Noise ; Respiratory System ; Western World ; World War I

On April 28, the National Assembly passed 3 bills revising the Medical Act, Pharmaceutical Affairs Act, and Medical Instruments Act which are related to the so-called 'dual punishment system' at its 9th plenary session of the 289th provisional meeting. According to the government timetable, beginning November of this year (2010), doctors will be subject to imprisonment for up to two years or face fines of up to 30 million won when found to have taken financial or non-financial benefits from drug companies. Their license could also be suspended for one year. Interactions between industry and physicians are vital to public health. However, they must be principled partnerships effectively managed to sustain public trust in both partners' commitment to patient welfare and the improvement of health care. Mounting scientific evidence indicates that gifts, favors, and other marketing activities, both explicit and implicit, prejudice independent judgment in unconscious ways. Physicians who receive free gifts from the pharmaceutical industry must consider the ethical dilemmas posed by this practice. These dilemmas are conflict of interest, impairment of objectivity, and the impact of these free gifts on the cost of health care. In order to minimize the likelihood of biased decisions by physicians, pharmaceutical companies should comply with their code of ethics for fair competition, while medical societies should establish an influence-free culture for physicians and optimize the benefits inherent in the principled relationships between medical society and industry.
Bias (Epidemiology) ; Codes of Ethics ; Conflict of Interest ; Delivery of Health Care ; Drug Industry ; Gift Giving ; Humans ; Judgment ; Licensure ; Marketing ; Prejudice ; Public Health ; Punishment ; Societies, Medical ; Unconscious (Psychology)