Abstract

In 1995, a research team from a renowned US university started collecting Blood samples from villagers living in Anhui province, China, with the cooperation of local research institutes and the Chinese Government. In 2000, the US university team was accused of violating Research ethics principles by not adequately informing the participants about the research and not sharing Benefit fairly. Subsequent investigations by American and Chinese media and authorities showed that the US research institute, its research personnel and a Pharmaceutical companies involved were benefiting substantially from the project, while the Chinese Research participants and the government were not. Three levels of Exploitation can be distinguished in this case: the exploitation of local individual citizens as human research participantsthe exploitation of the local scientific Community in Chinathe exploitation of the country’s national interestIn order to avoid such exploitation, high-income countries as well as low- and middle-income countries should strengthen their institutional arrangements and improve their cooperation mechanisms, in order to ensure that both sides benefit equally from Science & Technology cooperation.