Finding Your Way: A guide to understanding ethical issues related to preventive HIV vaccine clinical trial participation (2005)

AVAC and the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO) developed Finding Your Way as part of the ICASO series of HIV vaccine primers for communities.

This guide provides an introduction to the ethical principles raised in preventive HIV vaccine research and development, and examples of some of the actions taken to honor those principles.  Other primers in the ICASO series address HIV vaccine science and community involvement, and are available at http://www.icaso.org/vaccines.html.

The goals of Finding Your Way are to:

• Introduce the basic principles of ethical human clinical research;
• Highlight critical ethical issues that clinical trial participants may face in preventive HIV vaccine research and development;
• Provide a starting point for community dialogue about ethics and HIV vaccine research and development;
• Serve as a general reference for information about ethics in HIV vaccine research and development

This guide is not designed to provide solutions to ethical issues raised in HIV vaccine research and development.  It is important to take into consideration the specific details of any given trial, trial site, trial sponsor, community, or country involved in your situation. There are other excellent resources that can provide additional information on related topics, and they are included in the resource section at the end.

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