The public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid surge in activity in biomedical and social science. The pandemic created a need for new scientific knowledge specifically related to the new, emerging infectious agent and it quickly showed huge gaps in knowledge in relation to social and policy responses to pandemics. Governments all over the world accepted the COVID-19 pandemic as a significant public health crisis and went into crisis mode in order to end the crisis and mitigate its impacts. One area in which rapid policy changes occurred was in relation to research ethics. Research ethics systems and guidelines were changed in many countries. The COVID-19 crisis also led to a flurry of philosophical and bioethical work arguing that traditional research ethics rules and principles should be suspended, rethought, or abolished. This essay will analyze whether a public health crisis justifies changing research ethics principles and policies and, if so, what the scope of justified changes is.
