title: 'Wicked' ethics: Compliance work and the practice of ethics in HIV research.
abstract: Using ethnographic material collected between 2003 and 2007 in five HIV clinics in the US, South Africa, Uganda, and Thailand, this article examines "official ethics" and "ethics on the ground." It compares the ethical conundrums clinic staff and researchers confront in their daily work as HIV researchers with the dilemmas officially identified as ethical issues by bioethicists and people responsible for ethics reviews and compliance with ethics regulations. The tangled relation between ethical problems and solutions invites a comparison to Rittel and Webber's "wicked problems." Official ethics' attempts to produce universal solutions often make ethics problems even more wickedly intractable. Ethics on the ground is in part a reaction to this intractability.
authors: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, 1810 Chicago Ave., Evanston, IL 60208, USA; American Bar Foundation, 750 N. Lake Shore Dr., Chicago, IL 60611, USA. Electronic address: c-heimer@northwestern.edu.
authors: Carol A
authors: CA
authors: Heimer
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D026688:Bioethical Issues; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000941:ethics*; D026724:Ethical Review / Q000592:standards*; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D013019:South Africa; D013785:Thailand; D014454:Uganda; D014481:United States
keywords: Compliance; Ethics regulation; Globalization; HIV/AIDS; Medical research; South Africa; Thailand; Uganda