Physicians should use evidence-based guidelines as a starting point to make sound clinical treatment decisions for a patient's individual medical needs.
The AMA's Code of Medical Ethics' opinion on the use of databanks in genomic research requires informed consent by groups and individuals who are subjects of research.
The Declaration of Helsinki was recently revised to require that the control arm of a trial use the current standard of care, even if that standard is not generally available in developing nations where the research is being conducted.