Human subjects research with prisoners: putting the ethical question in context
By Osagie K. Obasogie and Keramet A. Reiter,
Bioethics
| 12. 16. 2010
[Commentary]
We write in response to the conversation initiated in Volume 24.1 of Bioethics, which focused on the role of prisoners in biomedical and behavioral research. As interdisciplinary legal scholars who have researched the history, ethics, and current practices of prison research in the United States, we write to encourage further dialogue about the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) recommendations to reform current standards for prisoners' participation as human subjects. Specifically, we challenge three critical assumptions, which underlie several articles in the Bioethics special issue.
First, we challenge the idea that a risk-benefit assessment applied to prisoner participants in research is too restrictive.1 On the contrary, we argue that it is too permissive. The IOM's risk-benefit proposal – the most significant of its five main recommendations – is designed to relax current standards that categorically restrict prisoners' participation as human subjects to four narrow situations that directly benefit prisoners.2 Current policies were implemented in response to substantial abuses directly connected to prisoners' vulnerability and deplorable prison conditions; a 1976 Commission concluded that widespread research in prisons should not be...
Related Articles
By Tomoko Otake, The Japan Times | 04.09.2024
A decade ago, researcher Haruko Obokata caused a sensation when she published two papers in the journal Nature, in which she claimed that she had discovered a way to create stem cells easily using the so-called STAP method.
With STAP...
By Yelena Biberman and Jonathan D. Moreno, Bioethics Forum | 04.16.2024
A quiet biological revolution in warfare is underway. The genome is emerging as a new domain of conflict. The level of destruction that only nuclear weapons could previously achieve is fast becoming as accessible as a cyberattack.
Now for the...
CGS is excited to announce the launch of a new anti-eugenics initiative that has been years in the making. Legacies of Eugenics in Science, Medicine, and Technology kicks off with a monthly essay series published at the Los Angeles Review of Books that will expose and contest the reemergence of eugenic ideas in contemporary health sciences, human biotechnology, public health, and medicine. Community and campus-based events featuring the authors are also being planned. The project is a collaboration among CGS...
By Tristan Manalac, BioSpace | 04.02.2024
Verve Therapeutics has suspended enrollment in the Phase Ib Heart-1 study evaluating its lead gene editing program VERVE-101 following a serious adverse event, the company announced Tuesday.
A patient, who received a 0.45-mg/kg dose of VERVE-101, developed a grade 3...