Abstract
Last year there was a heated debate regarding clinical trials with AZT carried out in developing countries. AIDs vaccine trials also posed various dilemmas and ethical problems. In this paper I will consider the possibility of corruption in bioethics, and international multi‐centre research will be taken as an example. International clinical trials will be seen from another perspective. I will try to show that the possibility of systemic corruption should be considered when designing an international multi‐centre research trial which may involve countries in very different situations regarding corruption. I will analyze three different approaches to this problem and suggest some strategies regarding their capacity to exclude the possibility of corruption.