 An alternative reading would be to interpret Jonas as arguing from a version of the active-passive distinction. It is often claimed that there is a profound moral difference between actively causing harm versus merely allowing harm to occur, between killing someone versus allowing them to die, for example. Jonas often seems to appeal to this distinction when evaluating the ethics of clinical research. The idea is that conducting clinical research involves investigators actively exposing individuals to risks of harm and, when those harms are realized, it involves investigators actively harming them. The investigator who injects a participant with an experimental medication actively exposes the individual to risks for the benefit of others and actively harms, perhaps even kills those who suffer harm as a result. And, to the extent that clinical research is conducted in the name of and for the benefit of society in general, one can say without too much difficulty that society is complicit in these harms. Not conducting clinical research, in contrast, involves our allowing individuals to be subject to diseases that we might otherwise have been able to avoid or cure. And this situation, albeit tragic and unfortunate, has the virtue of not involving clear moral wrongdoing.