U.S. Bioethics Panel to Review Clinical Trials Around the World
By Jocelyn Kaiser,
ScienceInsider
| 03. 01. 2011
Prompted by concerns about an unethical U.S.-sponsored study in the 1940s, bioethics advisers to President Barack Obama formed an international panel today that will examine whether current rules adequately protect volunteers in global clinical trials.
A historian at Wellesley College shocked the nation last October with the revelation that, from 1946 to 1948, a U.S. Public Health Service researcher deliberately exposed Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers, and others to syphilis and gonorrhea. The experiments drew comparisons with Tuskegee, the notorious 40-year study in Alabama begun in 1932 in which U.S. researchers allowed hundreds of African-American men with syphilis to go untreated.
In response, President Obama asked his Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to examine whether "current rules for research participants protect people from harm or unethical treatment, domestically as well as internationally." Obama also asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to investigate the Guatemala study. But that fact-finding job also fell to the bioethics commission after IOM realized that five of its members had been involved in the study. The commission is chaired by University of Pennsylvania President Amy...
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 Eric Schmidt, TIME | 04.16.2024
Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics and treat previously incurable genetic diseases. Meat is lab-grown; enhanced nutrient grains are climate-resistant. This is what the future could...
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...
By Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan, CBC | 04.09.2024
A Canadian DNA laboratory knowingly delivered prenatal paternity test results that routinely identified the wrong biological fathers — ruling out the real dads — and left a trail of shattered lives around the globe, a CBC News investigation has found...