“Your safety is our priority.” It’s difficult to visit a sports stadium, travel on an aircraft or even head to the cinema these days without being told that someone, somewhere, is watching out for you. So why do some systems that are set up to protect the volunteers who participate in scientific research seem so inadequate?

It’s not as if we haven’t been warned about what can happen when supervision and scrutiny are lax. In 2010, the US Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues was tasked with a sobering mission. A series of horrifying medical experiments on Guatemalan citizens — some intentionally infected with syphilis — in the 1940s had recently come to light. President Barack Obama asked the commission to determine whether such an atrocity could still happen today, and to evaluate the protections in place for all who participate in human-subject research funded by the US government.

The commission soon ran into a problem: a portrait of the current system was difficult to paint. Some government departments did not have ready access to essential data for identifying and tallying federally funded projects involving human subjects. More than six months after the commission asked for them, some departments were still unable to provide basic information, such as a list of all such projects, the number of participants involved and the location of the work.

…Read More

Image: Mai Le via Flickr CC BY 2.0

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike