In clinical trials, for-profit review boards are taking over for hospitals. Should they?
By Sheila Kaplan,
STAT
| 07. 06. 2016
For years, ethicist Arthur Caplan warned medical researchers that paying businesses to evaluate their clinical trials was a bad idea.
He condemned trials that didn’t rely on hospital or academic review boards — long the gold standard in science — and argued that for-profit review boards were out to make a buck, not protect patients.
Today, Caplan sits on the advisory board of WIRB-Copernicus Group, the largest commercial institutional review board, or IRB, in the country.
He says he had no choice.
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Image via Flickr/AJC
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