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18Adding Insult to Injury: Reluctance to Engage in Clinical Research with At-Risk Groups Further Disenfranchises These PopulationsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 9 (11): 62-64. 2009.
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17Prescription Requirements and Patient Autonomy: Considering an Over‐the‐Counter DefaultHastings Center Report 50 (6): 15-26. 2020.When new drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the default assumption is that they will be available by prescription only, safe for use exclusively under clinical supervision. The paternalism underlying this default must be interrogated in order to ensure appropriate respect for patient autonomy. Upon closer inspection, prescription requirements are justified when nonprescription status would risk harm to third parties and when a large segment of the population would struggle t…Read more
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17How Do Accredited Organizations Evaluate the Quality and Effectiveness of Their Human Research Protection Programs?AJOB Empirical Bioethics 14 (1): 23-37. 2023.Background Meaningfully evaluating the quality of institutional review boards (IRBs) and human research protection programs (HRPPs) is a long-recognized challenge. To be accredited by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP), organizations must demonstrate that they measure and improve HRPP “quality, effectiveness, and efficiency” (QEE). We sought to learn how AAHRPP-accredited organizations interpret and satisfy this standard, in order to assess stren…Read more
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17Evaluating the Quality of Research Ethics Review and Oversight: A Systematic Analysis of Quality Assessment InstrumentsAJOB Empirical Bioethics 11 (4): 208-222. 2020.
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17Streamlining Review by Accepting EquivalenceAmerican Journal of Bioethics 14 (5): 11-13. 2014.No abstract
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17Implementing Regulatory Broad Consent Under the Revised Common Rule: Clarifying Key Points and the Need for EvidenceJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 47 (2): 213-231. 2019.The revised Common Rule includes a new option for the conduct of secondary research with identifiable data and biospecimens: regulatory broad consent. Motivated by concerns regarding autonomy and trust in the research enterprise, regulators had initially proposed broad consent in a manner that would have rendered it the exclusive approach to secondary research with all biospecimens, regardless of identifiability. Based on public comments from both researchers and patients concerned that this app…Read more
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16There is limited guidance on how to assess the ethical acceptability of research risks that extend beyond research participants to third parties (or “research bystanders”). Community or stakeholder engagement has been proposed as one way to address potential harms to community members, including bystanders. Despite widespread agreement on the importance of community engagement in biomedical research, this umbrella term includes many different goals and approaches, agreement on which is ethically…Read more
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16INTRODUCTION Health Law and Anti-Racism: Reckoning and ResponseJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 50 (1): 10-14. 2022.Law and racism are intertwined, with legal tools bearing the potential to serve as instruments of oppression or equity. This Special Issue explores this dual nature of health law, with attention to policing in the context of mental health, schools, and substance use disorders; industry and the environment in the context of food advertising, tobacco regulation, worker safety, and environmental racism; health care and research in the context of infant mortality, bias in medical applications of AI,…Read more
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15Patient‐Centered Outcomes Research: Stakeholder Perspectives and Ethical and Regulatory Oversight IssuesIRB: Ethics & Human Research 40 (1): 7-17. 2018.
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14Plumbing the Depths of Ethical Payment for Research ParticipationAmerican Journal of Bioethics 21 (5). 2021.The peer commentaries on our Target Article, “Promoting Ethical Payment in Human Infection Challenge Studies,” offer a number of insights that will help advance the co...
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14When research poses risks to non‐participant bystanders, it is not always practicable to obtain their consent. One approach to assessing how much research risk may be imposed on nonconsenting bystanders is to examine analogous circumstances, including risk thresholds deemed acceptable for nonconsenting research participants and for nonconsensual risks imposed outside the research setting. For nonconsenting participants, US research regulations typically limit risks to those deemed to be “minimal…Read more
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11Devil in the Details: Physician Duties and Expanded AccessJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 51 (1): 181-184. 2023.Vermeulen et al. suggest a moral duty exists for physicians to inform patients of “relevant opportunities” for Expanded Access. Such a duty is likely both too broad, leading to important practical challenges, and too narrow, without further steps to promote patient access. However, physicians should be expected to be aware of the EA pathway, disclose it to eligible patients, and support the pursuit of EA options reasonably likely to help.
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8Curbside Consults in Clinical Medicine: Empirical and Liability ChallengesJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 49 (4): 599-610. 2021.In most U.S. jurisdictions, clinicians providing informal “curbside” consults are protected from medical malpractice liability due to the absence of a doctor-patient relationship. A recent Minnesota Supreme Court case, Warren v. Dinter, offers the opportunity to reassess whether the majority rule is truly serving the best interests of patients.
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8Diversity in IRB Membership: Views of IRB Chairpersons at U.S. Universities and Academic Medical CentersAJOB Empirical Bioethics 13 (4): 237-250. 2022.Background Diversity in Institutional Review Board (IRB) membership is important for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons, including fairness, promoting trust, improving decision quality, and responding to systemic racism. Yet U.S. IRBs remain racially and ethnically homogeneous, even as gender diversity has improved. Little is known about IRB chairpersons’ perspectives on membership diversity and barriers to increasing it, as well as current institutional efforts to promote diversity, equity…Read more
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7The right to withdraw from controlled human infection studies: Justifications and avoidanceBioethics 34 (8): 833-848. 2020.The right to withdraw from research without penalty is well established around the world. However, it has been challenged in some corners of bioethics based on concerns about various harms—to participants, to scientific integrity, and to research bystanders—that may stem from withdrawal. These concerns have become particularly salient in emerging debates about the ethics of controlled human infection (CHI) studies in which participants are intentionally infected with pathogens, often in inpatien…Read more
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4Human Subjects Research Regulation: Perspectives on the Future (edited book)MIT Press. 2014.Experts from different disciplines offer novel ideas for improving research oversight and protection of human subjects.
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2Big Mistake: Knowing and Doing Better in Patient EngagementHastings Center Report 53 (6): 2-2. 2023.Pushing back on policies favored by dying patients is a challenging endeavor, requiring tact, engagement, openness to bidirectional learning, and willingness to offer alternative solutions. It's easy to make missteps, especially in the age of social media. Holly Fernandez Lynch shares her experience learning with and from the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) community, first as a caricature of an ivory tower bioethicist and more recently as a trusted advisor, at least for some. Patient‐engage…Read more
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The Hopkins-Oxford Psychedelics Ethics (HOPE) Working Group Consensus StatementAmerican Journal of Bioethics 1-7. forthcoming..