Doris Schroeder

Responsible innovation is an approach to business that can both incur and save costs. Some company leaders are concerned that it is yet another administrative and financial burden on their commercial operations. Others can see its financial advantages, e.g. avoiding the development of products the market will not accept, or reducing costs through sustainability measures. Building on the corporate responsibility and management advice literature, this chapter indicates a number of areas where RI can create a competitive advantage for SMEs. Real life case studies provide examples of reduced costs, reputational gains, employee retention, faster market entry, access to previously unavailable stakeholders, higher acceptability of end products, and higher innovation potential through diverse employees. Success cannot be guaranteed, but the willingness of an SME to innovate in areas that have positive societal impact in addition to profits can bring business benefits.

Rationing and patient selection is inevitable in medical care, but in its most extreme form—when doctors and nurses decide about life and death—it is an almost unbearable burden for the profession. Eric Goemare, the Head of the South African Mission of Médicins Sans Frontières and his staff faced three equally difficult selection issues when rolling out antiretroviral treatment to HIV/AIDS patients in South Africa. Initially, the treatment had to be rationed due to lack of financial resources. Today, rationing is mostly due to lack of human resources. But at the same time, patients are being deselected because of nonadherence to the treatment regime to avoid the creation of multi-drug-resistant strains of the HIV virus

“Human rights” is a global topic. As soon as one agrees that a right is a human right, one cannot restrict it to certain groups. People have human rights by virtue of their humanity, not by virtue of their nationality, their status, their gender, their ethnicity, and so forth. This is why the topic is one of the most exciting, but also one of the most contentious discussed in the humanities and the social sciences. It is a topic that suggests numerous questions in three main areas: concept, content, and enforcement.

Rationing and patient selection is inevitable in medical care, but in its most extreme form—when doctors and nurses decide about life and death—it is an almost unbearable burden for the profession. Eric Goemare, the Head of the South African Mission of Médicins Sans Frontières and his staff faced three equally difficult selection issues when rolling out antiretroviral treatment to HIV/AIDS patients in South Africa. Initially, the treatment had to be rationed due to lack of financial resources. Today, rationing is mostly due to lack of human resources. But at the same time, patients are being deselected because of nonadherence to the treatment regime to avoid the creation of multi-drug-resistant strains of the HIV virus.

The COVID-19 pathogen led to a fast expanding pandemic because it proved lethal in certain populations but could be transmitted by persons who appeared healthy. As a result, researchers came under unprecedented time pressure to develop a vaccine. This case study focuses on the first COVID-19 vaccine, which was approved for use in humans, known as Comirnaty, the BioNTech-Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine or Vaccine BNT162b2. With the benefit of hindsight, we show how close collaboration with regulators and trust-based decisions meant that the race for a COVID-19 vaccine was won without purposefully infecting healthy participants with an infectious agent that can cause severe illness or death and for which no rescue therapy had existed.

Open access. This open-access book discusses vulnerability and the protection-inclusion dilemma of including those who suffer from serious poverty, severe stigma, and structural violence in research. Co-written with representatives from indigenous peoples in South Africa and sex workers in Nairobi, the authors come down firmly on the side of inclusion. In the spirit of leaving no one behind in research, the team experimented with data collection methods that prioritize research participant needs over researcher needs. This involved foregoing the collection of personal data and community researchers being involved in all stages of the research. In the process, the term ‘vulnerability’ was illuminated across significant language barriers as it was defined by indigenous peoples and sex workers themselves. The book describes a potential alternative to exclusion from research that moves away from traditional research methods. By ensuring that the research is led by vulnerable groups for vulnerable groups, it offers an approach that fosters trust and collaboration with benefits for the community researchers, the wider community as well as research academics. Those living in low-income settings, in dire situations that are summarized with the term ‘vulnerability’ know best what their problems are and which priorities they have. To exclude them from research for their own protection is a patronizing approach which insinuates that researchers and research ethics committees know best. The team from this book have shown that minimally risky and minimally burdensome research tailored towards the needs of highly marginalized and stigmatized communities can be scientifically valuable as well as inclusive and equitable. I congratulate them. Prof. Klaus Leisinger, President Global Values Alliance, Former personal advisor to Kofi Annan on corporate responsibility.