OF EVIDENCE IN BIOMEDICINE

dence ” is an interesting, important venture into a little explored field. Miké‘s two rules (use the best possible knowledge and acknowledge uncertainty) have been implicit but need to become explicit in a world where information and knowledge have enormous power—especially in medical practice and research, where evidence is essential to clini-cal decisions, policy formulation, and dis-semination of results. A fully developed ethics of evidence would depend on a still underde-veloped theory of evidence, that is, on some conception of the nature of evidence, the logic of its use, and the epistemology of discovery and explanation. Until such a groundwork is developed, practical guidelines are deducible in the ethics of data collection and dissemina-tion. This article examines those ethics, sug-gesting criteria for the morally responsible treatment of evidence collection, dissemina-tion, and use