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by Daniel Callahan (California/Milbank Books on Health and the Public), 329 pp, $29.95, ISBN 0-520-22771-0, Berkeley, University of California Press/Milbank Memorial Fund, 2003.

JAMA. 2004;292:744-745.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Few institutions enjoy as deep a reservoir of public support as biomedical research. At a time when many agencies are pruning their budgets, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recently completed another doubling, and headlines almost daily proclaim enticing new applications of biomedical discoveries. Bioethicist Daniel Callahan makes it clear that he considers biomedical research a social good. But can too much of a good thing do harm?

Callahan believes it can. He argues that the growth in biomedical research over the last half century is animated by an excess of what he terms the "research imperative": the view that biomedical research is an unalloyed good and a moral obligation. In Callahan's view, the research imperative sometimes tempts, and at other times inappropriately licenses, individuals and institutions involved in health care to compromise important values. In drawing commerce and the media into the laboratory, the research imperative endangers scientific . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Jonathan Kimmelman, PhD, Reviewer
Clinical Trials Research Group Biomedical Ethics Unit
Faculty of Medicine
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec
jonathan.kimmelman@mcgill.ca