1. For the purposes of this paper I takealienatinga right to be synonymous withwaivingthat right. The reason I did not make use of this synonymy in the above definition is that ‘a right is alienable just in case its holder is allowed to alienate it’ is less cognitively helpful than the definition given in the text.
2. RESEARCH PARTICIPATION AND THE RIGHT TO WITHDRAW
3. Clinical Trials of Xenotransplantation: Waiver of the Right to Withdraw from a Clinical Trial Should Be Required
4. Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that the distinction between moral and legal rights rests on a confusion, that ‘moral right’ and ‘legal right’ do not name distinct species of rights. (See Judith Jarvis Thomson. 1990.The Realm of Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: chapter 2, section 5.) My point here can be stated in a way consistent with her thesis: I intend to argue that the right to withdraw from research is alienable, not that we should implement legal policy to allow such alienation.
5. The Nuremberg Code's clause on subject withdrawal is:During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him impossible.(Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law, No. 10, Vol. 2. 1949.Nuremberg Code. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office: 181-182.) This is an exception to the general consensus of the inalienable right to withdraw, but not one friendly to my argument, for if I am right then it is sometimes permissible for a subject to waive the right to withdraweven whenhe has reached the physical or mental state where continuation seems to him impossible.