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20Vaccine Hesitancy: Some Concerns About Values and Trust, Comments on Vaccine Hesitancy by Maya J. GoldenbergInternational Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 15 (2): 108-115. 2022.A significant amount of scientific evidence shows that childhood vaccination constitutes one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions of the last century. It has saved millions of lives. Nonetheless, many parents are reluctant or outright hostile to having their children vaccinated. Similarly, in spite of the fact that vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are highly effective in protecting people against death and serious illness, about a thir…Read more
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18Primum Non Nocere: Should Gene Therapy Be Used to Prevent Potentially Fatal Disease but Enable Potentially Destructive Behavior?Human Gene Therapy 32 (11-12): 529-534. 2021.Aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) deficiency constitutes one of the most common hereditary enzyme deficiencies, affecting 35% to 40% of East Asians and 8% of the world population. It causes the well-known Asian Alcohol Flush Syndrome, characterized by facial flushing, palpitation, tachycardia, nausea, and other unpleasant feelings when alcohol is consumed. It is also associated with a marked increase in the risk of a variety of serious disorders, including esophageal cancer and osteoporosis. Our …Read more
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16Human embryo genetic editing: hope or pipe dream?Fertility and Sterility 116 (1): 25-26. 2021.Ethically sound analyses of embryo genetic editing require more than simple assessments of safety considerations. After all, we as humans care deeply not only about our health, but also care profoundly about the kinds of societies we construct, the injustices that our actions produce, the responsibilities that we have toward others and ourselves, our self-understanding, the characters that we develop, our family relationships, and the world that we leave to our children and grandchildren.
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16Conducting epigenetics research with refugees and asylum seekers: attending to the ethical challenges.Clinical Epigenetics 13 (1): 105-. 2021.An increase in global violence has forced the displacement of more than 70 million people, including 26 million refugees and 3.5 asylum seekers. Refugees and asylum seekers face serious socioeconomic and healthcare barriers and are therefore particularly vulnerable to physical and mental health risks, which are sometimes exacerbated by immigration policies and local social discriminations. Calls for a strong evidence base for humanitarian action have encouraged conducting research to address the…Read more
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16Rethinking Human Embryo Research PoliciesHastings Center Report 51 (1): 47-51. 2021.It now seems technically feasible to culture human embryos beyond the “fourteen‐day limit,” which has the potential to increase scientific understanding of human development and perhaps improve infertility treatments. The fourteen‐day limit was adopted as a compromise but subsequently has been considered an ethical line. Does it remain relevant in light of technological advances permitting embryo maturation beyond it? Should it be changed and, if so, how and why? What justifications would be nec…Read more
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15Should professional associations sanction conscientious refusals?American Journal of Bioethics 7 (6). 2007.This Article does not have an abstract
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14Disclosing Conflicts of Interest to Potential Research Participants: Good for Nothing?Ethics and Human Research 45 (2): 2-13. 2023.The growing commercialization of science has raised concerns about financial conflicts of interest (COIs). Evidence suggests that such conflicts threaten the integrity of research and the well-being of research participants. Trying to minimize these negative effects, federal agencies, academic institutions, and publishers have developed conflict-of-interest policies. Among such policies, recommendations or requirements to disclose financial COIs to potential research participants and patients ha…Read more
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14Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “A Duty to Participate in Research: Does Social Context Matter?”American Journal of Bioethics 8 (10): 3-4. 2008.Because of the important benefits that biomedical research offers to humans, some have argued that people have a general moral obligation to participate in research. Although the defense of such a putative moral duty has raised controversy, few scholars, on either side of the debate, have attended to the social context in which research takes place and where such an obligation will be discharged. By reflecting on the social context in which a presumed duty to participate in research will obtain,…Read more
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12IRBs and The Long-Term Social Implications of ResearchAmerican Journal of Bioethics 11 (5): 22-23. 2011.
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12When patient advocacy organizations meet industry: a novel approach to dealing with financial conflicts of interestBMC Medical Ethics 20 (1): 1-8. 2019.Background Much like academic-industry partnerships, industry financial support of patient advocacy organizations has become very common in recent years. While financial conflicts of interest between PAOs and industry have received more attention in recent years, robust efforts to mitigate these conflicts are still limited. Main body The authors outline the possible benefits and ethical concerns that can result from financial interactions between biomedical companies and PAOs. They argue that th…Read more
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10To Assess Technologies, Bioethicists Must Take Off Their BlinkersHastings Center Report 52 (5): 3-3. 2022.Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 5, Page 3-3, September–October 2022.
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10Monterrey, C-section capital of Mexico: Examining the ethical dimensionsInternational Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 2 (1): 148-164. 2009.Cesarean sections are one of the most commonly performed surgical operations worldwide. Though evidence suggests that non-medically indicated cesarean sections raise the health risks for mothers and their babies and result in increased costs of health care compared with vaginal deliveries, reports are common that the frequency of performance of this surgical procedure is far above WHO recommendations. Of special concern has been the current increase of cesarean delivery rates in some Latin Ameri…Read more
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10The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Evaluation of the Safety of Animal Clones: A Failure to Recognize the Normativity of Risk Assessment ProjectsBulletin of Science, Technology and Society 29 (1): 9-17. 2009.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced recently that food products derived from some animal clones and their offspring are safe for human consumption. In response to criticism that it had failed to engage with ethical, social, and economic concerns raised by livestock cloning, the FDA argued that addressing normative issues prior to issuing a final ruling on animal cloning is not part of its mission. In this article, the authors reject the FDA's claim that its mission to protect a…Read more
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10Beyond risk. A more realistic risk-benefit analysis of agricultural biotechnologiesEMBO Reports 9 (4): 302-06. 2008.
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8Phases of a Pandemic Surge: The Experience of an Ethics Service in New York City during COVID-19Journal of Clinical Ethics 31 (3): 219-227. 2020.When the COVID-19 surge hit New York City hospitals, the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College, and our affiliated ethics consultation services, faced waves of ethical issues sweeping forward with intensity and urgency. In this article, we describe our experience over an eight-week period (16 March through 10 May 2020), and describe three types of services: clinical ethics consultation (CEC); service practice communications/interventions (SPCI); and organizational ethics ad…Read more
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4Making the vulnerable less soMonash Bioethics Review 25 (2). 2006.Recent discussion on the need to reassess research ethics standards has called into question familiar concepts such as equipoise, coercion, undue inducement, and the protection of vulnerable subjects. Reassessment of these concepts can be useful for a variety of reasons. It can eliminate conceptual murkiness, can assist in the proposal of regulations to better protect human subjects, and can elucidate ethical concerns. In this essay, I call attention here to a different, and often neglected, rea…Read more
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2A liver for a kidney: Ethics of trans-organ paired exchangeAmerican Journal of Transplantation 18 (5): 1077-1082. 2018.Living donation provides important access to organ transplantation, which is the optimal therapy for patients with end-stage liver or kidney failure. Paired exchanges have facilitated thousands of kidney transplants and enable transplantation when the donor and recipient are incompatible. However, frequently willing and otherwise healthy donors have contraindications to the donation of the organ that their recipient needs. Trans-organ paired exchanges would enable a donor associated with a kidne…Read more
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2Can ethical reasoning contribute to better epidemiology? A case study in research on racial health disparitiesEuropean Journal of Epidemiology 22 (4): 215-21. 2007.
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1Scientific dissent and public policy. Is targeting dissent a reasonable way to protect sound policy decisions?EMBO Reports 14 (4): 231-35. 2013.
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1Regulating scientific research: should scientists be left alone?FASEB Journal 22 (3): 654-58. 2008.
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1When ethics constrains clinical research: trial design of control arms in "greater than minimal risk" pediatric trialsHuman Gene Therapy 22 (9): 1121-27. 2011.
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(Under)Valuing Surgical Informed ConsentJournal of the American College of Surgeons 2 (230): 257-62. 2020.
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How do disclosure policies fail? Let us count the ways.FASEB Journal 23 (6): 1638-42. 2009.The disclosure policies of scientific journals now require that investigators provide information about financial interests relevant to their research. The main goals of these policies are to prevent bias from occurring, to help identify bias when it occurs, and to avoid the appearance of bias. We argue here that such policies do little to help achieve these goals, and we suggest more effective alternatives.
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Novel therapies, high-risk pediatric research, and the prospect of benefit: learning from the ethical disagreements.Molecular Therapapy 20 (6). 2012.We focus here on high-risk pediatric research with the prospect of direct benefit and point out some aspects that have raised significant debate. In particular, we call attention to disagreements related to two essential aspects of this type of research: (i) determining what constitutes a “prospect of direct benefit” in phase I trials that involve gene transfer technologies and (ii) assessing when in these trials the risk is justified by the anticipated benefit to the participant children. Altho…Read more
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Viewpoint: developing a research ethics consultation service to foster responsive and responsible clinical research.Academic Medicine 82 (9): 900-4. 2007.
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Researching human oocyte cryopreservation: ethical issues.Fertility and Sterility 89 (3): 523-8. 2008.
Inmaculada de Melo-Martin
Weill Cornell Medicine--Cornell University
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Weill Cornell Medicine--Cornell UniversityProfessor
New York, NY, United States of America
Areas of Interest
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