A public health researcher was unclear on the ethical implications of a “secret shopper” concept — in this case, to see how many local stores failed to ask children under 18 for identification before selling them cigarettes. Another researcher wanted to recruit adolescents with chronic illness for a study through social media, but was unclear how to go about ethically obtaining parental consent.
These are two recent issues handled by the research ethics consultation (REC) service at Johns Hopkins. The REC serves as a resource to help answer investigators’ ethical questions. “We have created a place to come talk about research ethics that’s different from the IRB. It is an educational opportunity,” says Holly Taylor, PhD, MPH, PhD program director and core faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics in Baltimore.
Taylor is lead author of a recent paper on a national REC collaborative.1 Based on data collected on more than 350 consultations, the authors concluded that REC can assist investigators:
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Medical Ethics Advisor