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Clinical Trials & Research Ethics

Bioethics Forum Essay

Newly Released Documents from Untreated Syphilis Study: Ethical, Just, and Respectful Use of Archival Materials

To mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the United States Public Health Service’s Syphilis Study, the National Library of Medicine recently digitized and released reams of historical documents on the “origin and development of the Tuskegee syphilis study.” The release of these documents is a poignant occasion to consider what qualifies as ethical, just, and respectful use of archival materials.
Read Newly Released Documents from Untreated Syphilis Study: Ethical, Just, and Respectful Use of Archival Materials
Bioethics Forum Essay

Fear of Doing Too Much Too Soon or Too Little Too Late: Research on Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly affected the practice of clinical research. Researchers and IRBs have felt an urgency to respond more quickly than usual, aware that lives are at stake.
Read Fear of Doing Too Much Too Soon or Too Little Too Late: Research on Covid-19
Bioethics Forum Essay

Should We Enroll Our Child in a Covid-19 Vaccine Trial?

My partner and I are thinking a lot about this question. Moderna and Pfizer trials are running in our community–at the children’s hospital where I work as a clinical ethicist....
Read Should We Enroll Our Child in a Covid-19 Vaccine Trial?
Bioethics Forum Essay
gloved hands injecting a vaccine into an exposed shoulder

Ethics of Placebo Controls in Coronavirus Vaccine Trials

Multiple candidate vaccines for coronavirus are being evaluated scientifically in a process of unprecedented speed, and thousands of individuals around the world have volunteered to participate in placebo-controlled phase III field trials. If, or when, one of these candidate vaccines is proved to be safe and effective and receives an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, will it continue to be ethical to enroll participants in other coronavirus trials that randomize half of them to a placebo?
Read Ethics of Placebo Controls in Coronavirus Vaccine Trials
Bioethics Forum Essay
Krishna and Balarama ancient carving, Angkor

Volunteering for a Covid Vaccine Trial: Fulfilling Hindu Obligations or Fostering Pharmaceutical Company Profits?

Volunteering for a Covid-19 vaccine trial satisfied my altruistic goals and harmonizes with my Hindu beliefs. But I am troubled that a drug company is going to profit from my altruism and my religious obligations.
Read Volunteering for a Covid Vaccine Trial: Fulfilling Hindu Obligations or Fostering Pharmaceutical Company Profits?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ethical Responsibility in Publishing Research Results on Covid-19 Treatments

There is little doubt about the urgent need for Covid-19 treatment. But premature publication of definitive recommendations based on inappropriate conclusions grounded in scant, hastily-acquired data serve only at best to confuse and at worst mislead at a time when tensions are high and need for help is great.
Read Ethical Responsibility in Publishing Research Results on Covid-19 Treatments
Bioethics Forum Essay

Clinical Trials vs. Right to Try: Ethical Use of Chloroquine for Covid-19

Double-blind randomized clinical trials are the gold standard for answering the scientific question of whether a drug produces any effect, positive or negative, in Covid-19 patients. But is rational for a patient to choose to try a drug such as chloroquine for Covid-19 outside of a trial? Some patients may correctly hold that they have little to lose.
Read Clinical Trials vs. Right to Try: Ethical Use of Chloroquine for Covid-19
Bioethics Forum Essay

Transcending Borders in the Ethical Oversight of Human Genome Editing

The bioethics and legal communities must come together to find ways to move with the same ease of the scientific research community--to transcend the geopolitical borders and jurisdictional concerns that make international regulation so difficult.
Read Transcending Borders in the Ethical Oversight of Human Genome Editing
Bioethics Forum Essay

Hannah Arendt in St. Peter’s Square

Neither one of us expected to be talking about Hannah Arendt at the Vatican. We had been invited to give talks at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the scientific and ethical challenges posed by personalized medicine. Walking across the cobblestones of St. Peter’s Square we began to discuss how society regulates biomedical research. Are institutional review boards capable of dealing with innovations like personalized medicine? Are they too bound by regulations? Can they ask larger questions of meaning when simply following the rules won't suffice? And most worrisome, has their bureaucratic function caused them to mistake regulatory compliance for ethical reflection?
Read Hannah Arendt in St. Peter’s Square
Bioethics Forum Essay
Chinese scientist speaking at international meeting

Chinese Bioethicists Respond to the Case of He Jiankui

A preliminary investigation by Guangdong Province in China of He Jiankui, the scientist who created the world’s first gene-edited babies, found that “He had intentionally dodged supervision, raised funds and...
Read Chinese Bioethicists Respond to the Case of He Jiankui
Bioethics Forum Essay

He Jiankui’s Genetic Misadventure, Part 3: What Are the Major Ethical Issues?

In their single-minded venture of “producing” (shengchan, in their own word) the world’s first gene-edited babies, He Jiankui and his associates have posed numerous and daunting ethical challenges to China...
Read He Jiankui’s Genetic Misadventure, Part 3: What Are the Major Ethical Issues?
Bioethics Forum Essay

He Jiankui’s Genetic Misadventure, Part 2: How Different Are Chinese and Western Bioethics?

When the world’s first research on editing the genes of human embryos by Chinese scientists  was published in an international journal in 2015, a report in the New York Times...
Read He Jiankui’s Genetic Misadventure, Part 2: How Different Are Chinese and Western Bioethics?
Bioethics Forum Essay
human hand removing gene piece from dna strand

CRISPR in China: Why Did the Parents Give Consent?

The global scientific community has been unanimous in condemning Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who announced last week that he used the gene-editing technology called CRISPR to make permanent, heritable changes...
Read CRISPR in China: Why Did the Parents Give Consent?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Should We Edit the Human Germline? Is Consensus Possible or Even Desirable?

I started writing this on my way back to New York from the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, held in Hong Kong November 27 to 29, where the...
Read Should We Edit the Human Germline? Is Consensus Possible or Even Desirable?
Bioethics Forum Essay
man holding an iPhone with the app Facebook open

Social Media, Privacy, and Research: A Muddled Landscape

The advent of social media technology has opened many new avenues of research in population health, demographics, psychology, and the social sciences. It is crucial to consider whether researchers conducting...
Read Social Media, Privacy, and Research: A Muddled Landscape
Bioethics Forum Essay
Person Getting a Shot

Navigating Ethics Review of Human Infection Trials With Zika

Human infection challenge studies, which deliberately expose healthy volunteers to disease-causing infectious agents under carefully controlled conditions, offer a valuable method of biomedical research aimed at efficient initial efficacy testing...
Read Navigating Ethics Review of Human Infection Trials With Zika
Bioethics Forum Essay
older women holding each others hands

Palliative Care vs. Cancer Research

The death of former first lady Barbara Bush at age 92 was noteworthy in many ways. She was by all accounts smart, sharp and funny, and a fine, helpful wife...
Read Palliative Care vs. Cancer Research
Bioethics Forum Essay
white rat with red eyes in a cage

The Need for Open and High Quality Preclinical Science

An investigative report The BMJ published recently about a failed tuberculosis vaccine trial conducted with infants in South Africa underscores several issues in translational science that are gaining increased attention:...
Read The Need for Open and High Quality Preclinical Science
Bioethics Forum Essay

A New Mind-Body Problem

Not since Rene Descartes gazed from his garret window in early 17th-century Paris and wondered whether those were men or hats and coats covering “automatic machines” he saw roaming the...
Read A New Mind-Body Problem
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ethical Supervision?

As I read a recently published report of an interesting and important placebo-controlled trial of arthroscopic shoulder surgery, one sentence in particular caught my eye: “The study was designed under...
Read Ethical Supervision?
Bioethics Forum Essay
medical surgeons performing surgery

When Are Organ Recipients Human Research Subjects?

Do the recipients of organ transplants have a right to know if the organs they are about to receive were part of a research study? If so, are the recipients...
Read When Are Organ Recipients Human Research Subjects?
Bioethics Forum Essay

A Call for Medical Students to Learn the Full Story about the “Father of Gynecology”

Along with the recent public debates over  Confederate memorials, there have been calls to remove or modify the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, called the father of gynecology in...
Read A Call for Medical Students to Learn the Full Story about the “Father of Gynecology”
Bioethics Forum Essay
codis 2

International Sharing of Biological Specimens and Health Data: A Gap in the Consent Process?

The Precision Medicine Initiative plans to collect data and biological samples from one million or more individuals in the United States and engage in internationally collaborative research. That means that...
Read International Sharing of Biological Specimens and Health Data: A Gap in the Consent Process?
Bioethics Forum Essay

This Doctor Experimented on Slaves: It’s Time to Remove or Redo His Statue

“There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu declared to explain the removal of four Confederate monuments in New Orleans in May. The...
Read This Doctor Experimented on Slaves: It’s Time to Remove or Redo His Statue
Bioethics Forum Essay

Is There a Duty to Participate in Biospecimen Research?

In an essay in the May-June 2017 Hastings Center Report, Holly Fernandez Lynch and Michelle N. Meyer assess the impact of the revised Common Rule on biospecimen research. They believe...
Read Is There a Duty to Participate in Biospecimen Research?
Bioethics Forum Essay

A Right to Seek Payment for One’s Tissue

After much anticipation, on April 22, HBO debuted The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a film based on Rebecca Skloot’s bestselling book, starring Oprah Winfrey. Lacks’s cells provided the foundation...
Read A Right to Seek Payment for One’s Tissue
Bioethics Forum Essay

How Can Research with Prisoners Be Done Ethically? Q&A with Charles Lidz

Clinical research with prisoners is ethically vital and challenging. Studies investigating novel psychological, behavioral, and pharmacological interventions are imperative for the health and experiences of the people they focus on....
Read How Can Research with Prisoners Be Done Ethically? Q&A with Charles Lidz
Bioethics Forum Essay
genetic data scan glowing blue

Common Rule Revisions: Impact of Public Comment, and What’s Next?

On January 19, the day the final revisions to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects were published in the Federal Register, our essay “Public Engagement, Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking,...
Read Common Rule Revisions: Impact of Public Comment, and What’s Next?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Insights from Fictional Research Subjects

Mainstream research ethics rests on an incomplete foundation.  For the most part, human subjects regulations and guidelines reflect the views of professionals and others who have never been subjects themselves. ...
Read Insights from Fictional Research Subjects
Bioethics Forum Essay
old woman in pink on a computer screen

The 21st Century Cures Act Sparks Values Debate

On December 13th, President Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan, multidimensional health research and development bill.  The act allocates $4.8 billion to the National Institutes of Health...
Read The 21st Century Cures Act Sparks Values Debate
Bioethics Forum Essay

After the Election Bioethics Faces a Rocky Road

Academic bioethics has never been popular with Republicans. Libertarians dislike academic bioethics because it seems too elitist and anti-free market.  Religious thinkers worry it is technocratic, soulless and crassly utilitarian....
Read After the Election Bioethics Faces a Rocky Road
Bioethics Forum Essay
girl holding cellphone

Shortcomings of the Revised “Helsinki Declaration” on Ethical Use of Health Databases

Health apps, wearables, and other digital technologies that collect personal health data are profoundly changing the ways that biomedical research is conducted and the role of research participants. These technologies...
Read Shortcomings of the Revised “Helsinki Declaration” on Ethical Use of Health Databases
Bioethics Forum Essay

“Testing in the East”: An Episode in Cold War Bioethics

In 2013 the influential German magazine Der Spiegel published an expose about clinical trials conducted by Western drug companies in East Germany during the Cold War. The magazine reported that...
Read “Testing in the East”: An Episode in Cold War Bioethics
Bioethics Forum Essay
older black men smiling

Making Big Data Inclusive

Big Data, which is derived from a multitude of sources including, social media, “wearables,” electronic health records, and health insurances claims, is increasingly being used in health care and it...
Read Making Big Data Inclusive
Bioethics Forum Essay

Read the Fine Print Before Sending Your Spit to 23andMe

Editor’s note: This essay responds to an invitation (issued here and here) to submit commentaries on the ethical implications of partnerships between social media companies and biomedical researchers. The invitation...
Read Read the Fine Print Before Sending Your Spit to 23andMe
Bioethics Forum Essay
woman in scrubs leaning crouched against a wall

A FIRST-rate Oversight, and Other Problems with Studies of Medical Residents’ Work Hours

The rigors of medical and surgical training require long hours dedicated to providing clinical care. While long hours are necessary to obtain the experience to eventually practice independently, performing too...
Read A FIRST-rate Oversight, and Other Problems with Studies of Medical Residents’ Work Hours
Bioethics Forum Essay
apple and google logos

Apple and Google Plan to Reinvent Health Care. Should We Worry?

Editor’s note: This essay responds to an invitation (issued here and here) to submit commentaries on the ethical implications of partnerships between social media companies and biomedical researchers. The invitation...
Read Apple and Google Plan to Reinvent Health Care. Should We Worry?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Could DTC Genome Testing Exacerbate Research Inequities?

Editor’s note: This essay responds to an invitation (issued here and here) to submit commentaries on the ethical implications of partnerships between social media companies and biomedical researchers. The invitation...
Read Could DTC Genome Testing Exacerbate Research Inequities?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Response to Call for Essays: Social Media for Genetic Research

Editor’s note: This essay responds to an invitation (issued here and here) to submit commentaries on the ethical implications of partnerships between social media companies and biomedical researchers. The invitation...
Read Response to Call for Essays: Social Media for Genetic Research
Bioethics Forum Essay

Fresh Territory for Bioethics: Silicon Valley

Biomedical researchers are increasingly looking to Silicon Valley for access to human subjects, and Silicon Valley is looking to biomedical researchers for new ventures. These relationships could be a boon...
Read Fresh Territory for Bioethics: Silicon Valley
Bioethics Forum Essay
Windmill

DarkCo Petroceuticals, Angelic Solar Panels, and the SUPPORT Study

As the author of the article that claimed “vindication” for the SUPPORT study, I would like to respond to Professor Latham’s insightful interpretation of the issues in the case. Like Professor Latham, I will...
Read DarkCo Petroceuticals, Angelic Solar Panels, and the SUPPORT Study
Bioethics Forum Essay
baby feet

The SUPPORT Study Case: Not Vindication

Last week’s New England Journal of Medicine featured, and had an editorial about, a short opinion piece by John Lantos about the recent decision in Looney v. Moore. In that case, a Federal District judge dismissed the...
Read The SUPPORT Study Case: Not Vindication
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ethics, Optics, and Medicine as Work: Backstage at Planned Parenthood

Two days after a hidden camera video of Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services was released, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards, apologized for Dr....
Read Ethics, Optics, and Medicine as Work: Backstage at Planned Parenthood
Bioethics Forum Essay
test tubes

Suing for Justice? More on the U.S. STD Studies in Guatemala

On April 1, a $1 billion lawsuit was filed by three law firms based in the United States and Venezuela against Johns Hopkins University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Bristol-Myers Squibb on...
Read Suing for Justice? More on the U.S. STD Studies in Guatemala
Bioethics Forum Essay
genetic strand

OHRP’s Dangerous Draft Guidance

In October, the federal Office for Human Research Protections issued a “Draft Guidance on Disclosing Reasonably Foreseeable Risks in Research Evaluating Standards of Care.” It follows the controversy that erupted in 2013...
Read OHRP’s Dangerous Draft Guidance
Bioethics Forum Essay
white, tan and brown colored dog is laying on the wooden floor

Trapper’s Care in the Animal ER and Frank Talk about Costs

“The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful...
Read Trapper’s Care in the Animal ER and Frank Talk about Costs
Bioethics Forum Essay
girl holding cellphone

Facebook’s Emotion Experiment: Implications for Research Ethics

Several aspects of a recently published experiment conducted by Facebook have received wide media attention, but the study also raises issues of significance for the ethical review of research more generally. In...
Read Facebook’s Emotion Experiment: Implications for Research Ethics
Bioethics Forum Essay
wooden colored pencils

Chronicling the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Through Art

I was born in the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital in 1974 where the Tuskegee Syphilis Study took place. I have had a lifelong curiosity about the ethics of the study and...
Read Chronicling the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Through Art
Bioethics Forum Essay
signature on paper

A Medical Student’s Call for Action Against Research Misconduct

Is research misconduct and abuse the norm in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Psychiatry? A recent investigative report from KMSP News in the Twin Cities suggests that the answer may well...
Read A Medical Student’s Call for Action Against Research Misconduct
Bioethics Forum Essay
young girl writing

Orphans to History: A Response to the Bucharest Early Intervention Project Investigators

I appreciate the thoughtful responses to my essay on the ethics of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), from its investigators, Drs. Fox, Zeanah and Nelson and from Dr. Millum, one of the bioethicists...
Read Orphans to History: A Response to the Bucharest Early Intervention Project Investigators
Bioethics Forum Essay
handicap sign

New Recommendations for Research with Human Subjects Who Lack Consent Capacity

The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law released its Report and Recommendations for Research with Human Subjects Who Lack Consent Capacity today, which analyzes the ethical and legal implications...
Read New Recommendations for Research with Human Subjects Who Lack Consent Capacity
Bioethics Forum Essay

Canada Confronts its Own “Tuskegee” Studies

Last summer’s revelations that malnourished Aboriginals in Canada served as unwitting and unprotected subjects in nutritional experiments in the 1940s and 1950s brought a sharp reaction–though the research took place...
Read Canada Confronts its Own “Tuskegee” Studies
Bioethics Forum Essay

Romanian Orphans Study: A Bioethicist Responds to Ethical Concerns

Last month, Joseph J. Fins published a commentary on this blog criticizing the ethics of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP)–a randomized, controlled trial of Romanian children who had been in orphanages,...
Read Romanian Orphans Study: A Bioethicist Responds to Ethical Concerns
Bioethics Forum Essay

Romanian Orphans Study: Investigators Respond to Ethical Questions

We appreciate having an opportunity to respond to the commentary on the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) by Joseph Fins. We respect his status as a leading bioethics authority, although we are...
Read Romanian Orphans Study: Investigators Respond to Ethical Questions
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Push for Data Transparency and Implications for Research

Some of the most hotly debated questions making the rounds these days include who should interpret, distribute, review, and receive data, and with good reason. From WikiLeaks to National Security...
Read The Push for Data Transparency and Implications for Research
Bioethics Forum Essay
surgeon holding scissors

Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends

If the mutilated body of one of your research subjects is discovered in a blood-soaked bathroom, who should investigate the death?  If you want to be cleared of blame, it’s...
Read Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Bioethics Forum Essay

Romanian Orphans: A Reconsideration of the Ethics of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project

Recently I had a Susan Reverby moment. Reverby is the Wellesley historian best known for unearthing the revelations of the Guatemalan syphilis and gonorrhea studies conducted by the United States Public Health...
Read Romanian Orphans: A Reconsideration of the Ethics of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project
Bioethics Forum Essay

Support for Returning Results of Alzheimer’s Disease Biomarker Research

This used to be a purely academic question: If you could know, years before you had symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, that you were likely to develop it–and there was no...
Read Support for Returning Results of Alzheimer’s Disease Biomarker Research
Bioethics Forum Essay

Dozens of Bioethicists Air Views on SUPPORT Study Controversy

For those following the SUPPORT Study controversy, the New England Journal of Medicine published this week a letter to the editor organized by Ruth Macklin, Alice Dreger, and me, and signed by 45 “physicians,...
Read Dozens of Bioethicists Air Views on SUPPORT Study Controversy
Bioethics Forum Essay

SUPPORT Update: OHRP’s Compliance Actions on Hold

In a thoughtful, nuanced letter to the University of Alabama (the home of the Principal Investigator of the SUPPORT study), the Office for Human Research Protection announced that it has “put...
Read SUPPORT Update: OHRP’s Compliance Actions on Hold
Bioethics Forum Essay

The SUPPORT Study and the Standard of Care

The clinical research community and a number of prominent bioethicists have swiftly come to the defense of investigators conducting the SUPPORT study, in which approximately 1,300 premature infants were randomly...
Read The SUPPORT Study and the Standard of Care
Bioethics Forum Essay

Public Citizen: The SUPPORT Study was Even Worse than We Thought

In his April 18 Bioethics Forum article, John Lantos criticized the findings of the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Human Research Protections that the conduct of the Surfactant,...
Read Public Citizen: The SUPPORT Study was Even Worse than We Thought
Bioethics Forum Essay

Public Citizen and Misinformed Consent in Neonatal Intensive Care

Public Citizen, the so-called “citizen’s advocacy group,” continues to criticize the NIH-sponsored clinical trials of oxygen therapy for premature babies.  They followed up their April 10th letter with another, on May 8th. ...
Read Public Citizen and Misinformed Consent in Neonatal Intensive Care
Bioethics Forum Essay

Shame and Guilt in Minnesota

Over the past month, a petition asking the governor of Minnesota to investigate a research scandal at the University of Minnesota has been steadily gathering momentum.  The scandal in question originated in...
Read Shame and Guilt in Minnesota
Bioethics Forum Essay

OHRP and Public Citizen Are Wrong about Neonatal Research on Oxygen Therapy

On March 7, 2013, the federal Office of Human Research Protections notified the principal investigator of the Surfactant, Positive Pressure, Oxygenation Randomized Trial (SUPPORT) that “the conduct of this study...
Read OHRP and Public Citizen Are Wrong about Neonatal Research on Oxygen Therapy
Bioethics Forum Essay

Kafkaesque and Dickensian: The Human Subjects Protection Maze

“Mr Mayor,” said K., “you keep calling my case one of the smallest, yet a great many officials have put their minds to it, and while it may have been very...
Read Kafkaesque and Dickensian: The Human Subjects Protection Maze
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Ethical Imperialism of Moral Science

In December, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released a 200-page report, Moral Science: Protecting Participants in Human Subjects in Research. Continuing a decades-old tradition, the report treats...
Read The Ethical Imperialism of Moral Science
Bioethics Forum Essay

Geron’s Discontinued Stem Cell Trial: What About the Research Participants?

On November 14, Geron, a pioneer in the field of human embryonic stem cell research, announced that it would discontinue its stem cell programs. This abrupt decision, which shocked the...
Read Geron’s Discontinued Stem Cell Trial: What About the Research Participants?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Freedom’s Just Another Word for . . . Restriction?

What tools does a university administration have at its disposal to shut up critics on its own faculty? The University of Minnesota wants to know. The university’s administration is exploring...
Read Freedom’s Just Another Word for . . . Restriction?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Time for the American Anthropological Association to Apologize

Last week, the journal Human Nature published via open access an article I wrote following a year of historical research. That article, “Darkness’s Descent on the American Anthropological Association: A...
Read Time for the American Anthropological Association to Apologize
Bioethics Forum Essay

Nationalizing IRBs for Biomedical Research – and for Justice

I know that when my medical school sends us all an announcement that we’ve broken a record for funded research, I’m supposed to be happy. Wrong week for that. Shortly...
Read Nationalizing IRBs for Biomedical Research – and for Justice
Bioethics Forum Essay

After the Media Frenzy, Preventing Another ‘Guatemala’

 I might easily have missed it. I was being a compulsive historian, going to one more archive (having already been to many) to find more material for what would become...
Read After the Media Frenzy, Preventing Another ‘Guatemala’
Bioethics Forum Essay

Legal but Unethical: Who Works on That?

It’s hard to say what is most horrifying in Carl Elliott’s report in the current issue of Mother Jones of a young man who died caught up in a pharma...
Read Legal but Unethical: Who Works on That?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Preventing Homosexuality (and Uppity Women) in the Womb?

Two weeks ago, Time magazine reported on our ongoing efforts to protect the rights of pregnant women offered dexamethasone, a risky Class C steroid aimed at female fetuses that may...
Read Preventing Homosexuality (and Uppity Women) in the Womb?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Bad Vibrations

In “The Rhetoric of Dehumanization: An Analysis of Medical Reports of the Tuskegee Syphilis Project,” Martha Solomon brilliantly demonstrates how the project’s researchers hid their work in plain sight. Specifically,...
Read Bad Vibrations
Bioethics Forum Essay

Prenatal Dex: Update and Omnibus Reply

Our Bioethics Forum essay from a little over a month ago has already spawned three further essays. So we’ve asked the editors to indulge us in this single reply and update....
Read Prenatal Dex: Update and Omnibus Reply
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Vulnerable Researcher and the IRB

“Why don’t you just go through the IRB process to protect yourself?” one of my colleagues asked me (again) the other day. And I sighed (again). My tendency is to...
Read The Vulnerable Researcher and the IRB
Bioethics Forum Essay

So You’re a Scholar Who Wants to Make Things Happen

Because for about the last decade I have been a medical humanist working to change the way physicians treat people born with socially-challenging bodies, I’m frequently asked about doing activism...
Read So You’re a Scholar Who Wants to Make Things Happen
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