Payments in Clinical Research: Views and Experiences of Participants in South Africa

Clinical research involving humans introduces multiple ethical controversies, including the one surrounding payments provided to research participants. Providing monetary payments to clinical research participants is a widely used practice, but it continuously raises debates. Concerns have been expressed that payments can influence decisions of potential research participants regarding enrollment in a study, possibly violating voluntariness of consent, “blinding” participants to the risks involved, and leading to undue inducement (mcneill 1997; lemmens and elliott 1999; ballantyne 2008). It has also been hypothesized that by paying participants, investigators may disproportionally attract economically disadvantaged people who come to bear an unfair proportion of the burdens while society at large receives the benefits (mcgregor 2005; phillips 2011; mcneill 1997). Paying participants can also lead to commercialization of participation in clinical research (chambers 2001; king 2001). According to a long prevailing view, only payments that are intended to reimburse research participants for losses incurred in connection with participation in research, such as travel costs, are considered to be ethically nonproblematic (wilkinson and moore 1997).keywordsclinical researchresearch participanthost communitycollaborative partnershipglobal health researchthese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.