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 Karin Hammarberg and Catherine Mills, BioNews | 10.13.2025
The Australian fertility industry has been rocked by several recent cases of embryo and sperm mix-ups. With a lack of transparency about what clinics do to prevent such errors recurring, trust and confidence in the industry and how it is...
By Rob Stein, NPR | 09.30.2025
Scientists have created human eggs containing genes from adult skin cells, a step that someday could help women who are infertile or gay couples have babies with their own genes but would also raise difficult ethical, social and legal issues...
By Daniel Hildebrand, The Humanist | 10.01.2025
When most people hear the word eugenics, they think of dusty history textbooks and black-and-white photographs: forced sterilizations in the early 20th century, pseudoscientific charts measuring skulls, the language of “fitness” used to justify violence and exclusion. It feels like...
By Claire Robinson, GMWatch | 09.29.2025
According to an article on BBC News, the Quadram Institute in Norwich is recruiting 76 people with low vitamin D to take part in the ViTaL-D Study, where some participants will eat soup containing tomatoes that have been genetically...