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.
Continue reading on STAT
Image via Flickr/AJC
Related Articles
By Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, CNN | 09.18.2026
The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.
The US...
By Gay Pasley, Essence | 09.04.2026
That is what makes the unfolding case of McKenna West so important. It is more than a disagreement about abortion or a dispute over a surrogacy contract. It asks whether an agreement signed before a pregnancy can become authority...
By Anna L. Philippe, Pop Panic | 09.17.2026
What does it mean when education is considered a threat to population? As an education student, I am interested in the ways population panics are essentialized and circulated in formal education settings. Schools can play a major role in shaping...
By Ava Kofman, The New Yorker | 09.15.2026
A WOMAN WHO ACTS AS A SURROGATE, carrying a child for someone else, is said to be going on a “journey.”
Kayla Elliott started her surrogacy journey at the age of twenty-six. She gave birth to a baby girl for...
