This post is part of Bill of Health’s symposium on the Law, Ethics, and Science of Re-Identification Demonstrations. Background on the symposium is here. You can call up all of the symposium contributions by clicking here. —MM By Daniel C. Barth-Jones In Part 1 and Part 2 of this symposium contribution I wrote about a number of…
By Michelle Meyer This post is part of Bill of Health‘s symposium on the Law, Ethics, and Science of Re-Identification Demonstrations. Background on the symposium is here. You can call up all of the symposium contributions by clicking here. —MM Daniel C. Barth-Jones, M.P.H., Ph.D., is a HIV and infectious disease epidemiologist. His work in…
By Michelle Meyer Brilliant.
By Laura Stark The first session on “vulnerable populations” just wrapped up at the workshop on “Frontiers of Informed Consent” at Northeastern University in Boston—with great talks on migrant, refugee, and indigenous communities and conflicts between law, ethics, and logistics of informed consent. Today and tomorrow, there will be talks and discussion on IRBs and…
By Suzanne M. Rivera, Ph.D. The Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) has issued revised guidance about research subject compensation. And, although it has not attracted a great deal of fanfare, it deserves attention because the new guidance offers greater flexibility to investigators and to the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) charged with reviewing proposed human…
By Nicholson Price There’s a fascinating and tragic story coming to its conclusion at UC Davis, which points at the fine line between clinical innovation and experimental treatment. Two neurosurgeons just resigned, following the resignation of the med school’s dean last year. The neurosurgeons, going off anecdotal evidence that some patients with deadly glioblastomas lived…
By Nicholson Price A few days ago, NIH announced an agreement with the family of Henrietta Lacks. When she was being treated for an aggressive tumor, cells were taken without her consent or knowledge and used to create the HeLa cell line, which is tremendously widespread in biomedical research today – the story is well-chronicled in…
By Arthur Caplan Art Caplan has a new opinion piece up at nbcnews.com on the longstanding controversy over the use of the cells of Henrietta Lacks, a poor African American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951, for research that has generated billions of dollars through scientific research over more than six decades. This research…
By Annette Rid Placebo controls usually get special treatment. Almost all ethical guidelines for research specify how to use placebo controls, in particular when an established or proven effective treatment exists. To list just a few: guidance issued by the World Medical Association, CIOMS and the Council of Europe all have provisions dedicated to the…
By Arthur Caplan An article in today’s New York Times explores allegations of improper research practices at GlaxoSmithKline’s research and development center in Shanghai, China. The article quotes Art Caplan in reference to evidence that researchers proceeded with drug trials in humans before animal studies were complete: “If that’s true, it’s a mortal sin in…
