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73Using Social Media as a Research Recruitment Tool: Ethical Issues and RecommendationsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 17 (3): 3-14. 2017.The use of social media as a recruitment tool for research with humans is increasing, and likely to continue to grow. Despite this, to date there has been no specific regulatory guidance and there has been little in the bioethics literature to guide investigators and institutional review boards faced with navigating the ethical issues such use raises. We begin to fill this gap by first defending a nonexceptionalist methodology for assessing social media recruitment; second, examining respect for…Read more
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35Mountains and Molehills When Using Social Media as a Research Support ToolAmerican Journal of Bioethics 19 (6): 64-66. 2019.Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 64-66.
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31Differential payment to research participants in the same study: an ethical analysisJournal of Medical Ethics 45 (5): 318-322. 2019.Recognising that offers of payment to research participants can serve various purposes—reimbursement, compensation and incentive—helps uncover differences between participants, which can justify differential payment of participants within the same study. Participants with different study-related expenses will need different amounts of reimbursement to be restored to their preparticipation financial baseline. Differential compensation can be acceptable when some research participants commit more …Read more
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30Journeying to Ixtlan: Ethics of Psychedelic Medicine and Research for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related DementiasAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (2): 107-123. 2023.In this paper, we examine the case of psychedelic medicine for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). These “mind-altering” drugs are not currently offered as treatments to persons with AD/ADRD, though there is growing interest in their use to treat underlying causes and associated psychiatric symptoms. We present a research agenda for examining the ethics of psychedelic medicine and research involving persons living with AD/ADRD, and offer preliminary analyses of six ethical issue…Read more
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30Incorporating ethical principles into clinical research protocols: a tool for protocol writers and ethics committeesJournal of Medical Ethics 42 (4): 229-234. 2016.
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29A Functional Approach to Assessing Consent for Biospecimen ResearchAmerican Journal of Bioethics 17 (12): 20-23. 2017.
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28Institutions as an ethical locus of research prioritisationJournal of Medical Ethics 43 (12): 816-818. 2017.Ensuring that clinical trials, once launched, successfully complete and generate useful knowledge is an important and indeed ethically imperative goal, given the risks and burdens borne by research participants. Since there are insufficient willing research participants to power all the trials that are currently undertaken,1 addressing underenrolment will require prioritisation decisions that reduce the number of trials competing for participants. While there are multiple levels at which researc…Read more
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28A Response to CommentariesHastings Center Report 46 (S2): 45-48. 2016.Our article “NFL Player Health Care: Addressing Club Doctors’ Conflicts of Interests and Promoting Player Trust” focused on an inherent structural conflict that faces club doctors in the National Football League. The conflict stems from club doctors’ dual role of providing medical care to players and providing strategic advice to clubs. We recommended assigning these roles to different individuals, with the medical staff members who are responsible for providing player care being chosen and subj…Read more
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27Nonexceptionalism, Research Risks, and Social Media: Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Using Social Media as a Research Recruitment Tool: Ethical Issues and Recommendations”American Journal of Bioethics 17 (5): 1-3. 2017.
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27Differential Payments to Research Participants in the Same Study: An Ethical AnalysisJournal of Medical Ethics 1. 2019.Recognizing that offers of payment to research participants can serve various purposes—reimbursement, compensation, and incentive—helps uncover differences between participants that can justify differential payment of participants within the same study. Participants with different study-related expenses will need different amounts of reimbursement to be restored to their pre-participation financial baseline. Differential compensation can be acceptable when some research participants commit mor…Read more
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26Bioethics and the Moral Authority of ExperienceAmerican Journal of Bioethics 23 (1): 12-24. 2022.While experience often affords important knowledge and insight that is difficult to garner through observation or testimony alone, it also has the potential to generate conflicts of interest and unrepresentative perspectives. We call this tension the paradox of experience. In this paper, we first outline appeals to experience made in debates about access to unproven medical products and disability bioethics, as examples of how experience claims arise in bioethics and some of the challenges raise…Read more
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24Ethically Allocating COVID-19 Drugs Via Pre-approval Access and Emergency Use AuthorizationAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (9): 4-17. 2020.Allocating access to unapproved COVID-19 drugs available via Pre-Approval Access pathways or Emergency Use Authorization raises unique challenges at the intersection of clinical care and research....
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24The rights and wrongs of intentional exposure research: contextualising the Guatemala STD inoculation studyJournal of Medical Ethics 38 (8): 513-515. 2012.In its recent review of the US Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study, conducted in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues identified a number of egregious ethical violations, but failed to adequately address issues associated with the intentional exposure research design in particular. As a result, a common public misconception that the study was wrong because researchers purposefully infected their subjects has …Read more
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24No Easy Answers in Allocating Unapproved COVID-19 Drugs Outside Clinical TrialsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (9). 2020.Volume 20, Issue 9, September 2020, Page W1-W4.
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24Promoting Ethical Payment in Human Infection Challenge StudiesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 21 (3): 11-31. 2021.To prepare for potential human infection challenge studies involving SARS-CoV-2, we convened a multidisciplinary working group to address ethical questions regarding whether and how much SAR...
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23Patient‐Engaged Research: Choosing the “Right” Patients to Avoid PitfallsHastings Center Report 48 (5): 26-34. 2018.To ensure that the information resulting from research is relevant to patients, the Patient‐Centered Outcomes Research Institute eschews the “traditional health research” paradigm, in which investigators drive all aspects of research, in favor of one in which patients assume the role of research partner. If we accept the premise that patient engagement can offer fresh perspectives that shape research in valuable ways, then at least two important sets of questions present themselves. First, how a…Read more
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23Facilitating Both Evidence and Access: Improving FDA's Accelerated Approval and Expanded Access PathwaysJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 48 (2): 365-372. 2020.
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22Confronting Biospecimen Exceptionalism in Proposed Revisions to the Common RuleHastings Center Report 46 (1): 4-5. 2016.On September 8, 2015, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making to revise the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, widely known as the “Common Rule.” The NPRM proposes several changes to the current system, including a dramatic shift in the approach to secondary research using biospecimens and data. Under the current rules, it is relatively easy to use biospecimens and data for secondary research. This approach systematically facilitates …Read more
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21The Legality of Biometric Screening of Professional AthletesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 17 (1): 65-67. 2017.
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21A Proposal to Address NFL Club Doctors’ Conflicts of Interest and to Promote Player TrustHastings Center Report 46 (S2): 2-24. 2016.How can we ensure that players in the National Football League receive excellent health care they can trust from providers who are as free from conflicts of interest as realistically possible? NFL players typically receive care from the club's own medical staff. Club doctors are clearly important stakeholders in player health. They diagnose and treat players for a variety of ailments, physical and mental, while making recommendations to the player concerning those ailments. At the same time, clu…Read more
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21Mutual Obligations in Research and Withholding Payment From Deceptive ParticipantsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 18 (4): 85-87. 2018.
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20Regulating Research with Biospecimens under the Revised Common RuleHastings Center Report 47 (3): 3-4. 2017.Since 2011, the research community had waited with bated breath as regulators contemplated for the first time bringing secondary research with nonidentifiable biospecimens under the Common Rule and dramatically tightening the criteria for waiving consent to biospecimen research. After considerable pushback from both researchers and patients and amid rumors of intractable disagreement among Common Rule agencies, the Final Rule published on the last day of President Obama's administration left out…Read more
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20Helpful Lessons and Cautionary Tales: How Should COVID-19 Drug Development and Access Inform Approaches to Non-Pandemic Diseases?American Journal of Bioethics 21 (12): 4-19. 2021.After witnessing extraordinary scientific and regulatory efforts to speed development of and access to new COVID-19 interventions, patients facing other serious diseases have begun to ask “where’s...
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20When clinical trials compete: prioritising study recruitmentJournal of Medical Ethics 43 (12): 803-809. 2017.It is not uncommon for multiple clinical trials at the same institution to recruit concurrently from the same patient population. When the relevant pool of patients is limited, as it often is, trials essentially compete for participants. There is evidence that such a competition is a predictor of low study accrual, with increased competition tied to increased recruitment shortfalls. But there is no consensus on what steps, if any, institutions should take to approach this issue. In this article,…Read more
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20Opening Closed Doors: Promoting IRB TransparencyJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 46 (1): 145-158. 2018.Institutional Review Boards have substantial power and authority over research with human subjects, and in turn, their decisions have substantial implications for those subjects, investigators, and the public at large. However, there is little transparency about IRB processes and decisions. This article provides the first comprehensive taxonomy of what transparency means for IRBs — answering the questions “to whom, about what, and by what mechanisms?” It also explains why the status quo of nontr…Read more
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20Institutional Review Board Use of Outside Experts: A National SurveyAJOB Empirical Bioethics 13 (4): 251-262. 2022.Background Institutional review board (IRB) expertise is necessarily limited by maintaining a manageable board size. IRBs are therefore permitted by regulation to rely on outside experts for review. However, little is known about whether, when, why, and how IRBs use outside experts.Methods We conducted a national survey of U.S. IRBs to characterize utilization of outside experts. Our study uses a descriptive, cross-sectional design to understand how IRBs engage with such experts and to identify …Read more
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19Filthy Lucre or Fitting Offer? Understanding Worries About Payments to Research ParticipantsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 19 (9): 1-4. 2019.Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 1-4.
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18Compensating for research risk: permissible but not obligatoryJournal of Medical Ethics 46 (12): 827-828. 2020.When payment is offered for controlled human infection model research, ethical concerns may be heightened due to unfamiliarity with this study design as well as perceptions—and misperceptions—regarding risk. Against this backdrop, we commend Grimwade et al 1 for their careful handling of the relevant issues, coupling empirical and conceptual approaches. We agree with foundational elements of the authors’ analysis, including the acceptability of payment for research risk.1 However, in our view, i…Read more
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17Allocation of Opportunities to Participate in Clinical Trials during the Covid‐19 Pandemic and Other Public Health EmergenciesHastings Center Report 52 (1): 51-58. 2021.Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 51-58, January/February 2022.