Guest Post: Michael S. Dauber, MA * Note: this article is being cross-posted at the Practical Ethics blog. In 2015, Sergio Canavero announced that he would perform a therapeutic head transplant procedure on a human subject by December 2017. Since then, he has recruited the assistance of surgeon Xiaoping Ren and switched from Valery Spiridonov to an […]
Category: Research Ethics
Ethical Issues when Modelling Brain Disorders in Non-human Primates
Guest Post: Carolyn Neuhaus, Ph.D. Paper: Ethical issues when modelling brain disorders in non-human primates In early 2016, Nature published a letter from a group of Chinese researchers reporting that they had created rhesus macaques with “autism-like” behaviours. The macaque was bred with a mutation in the MeCP2 gene. Overexpression of MeCP2 occurs in MeCP2 Duplication Syndrome, a […]
Advances in Neuroscience Strengthen Ethical Opposition to Harmful Experiments on Dogs
Guest Post: Jarrod Bailey, Cruelty Free International, London, UK. Paper: Advances in Neuroscience Imply that Harmful Experiments in Dogs are Unethical More than 200,000 dogs are used in harmful experiments every year worldwide, in research into human and animal diseases and in the testing of new drugs and agrochemicals. This continues despite significant public opposition […]
Can We Trust Research in Science and Medicine?
By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp) Readers of the JME Blog might be interested in this series of short videos in which I discuss some of the major ongoing problems with research ethics and publication integrity in science and medicine. How much of the published literature is trustworthy? Why is peer review such a poor quality control mechanism? How can we judge […]
Not Just About Consent: The Ethical Dimensions of Research Methodology Knowledge in IRBs
Guest Post: Sarah Wieten The recent article, “Some Social Scientists Are Tired of Asking for Permission” in the New York Times inspired a great deal of debate about the role of institutional research ethics board (IRB) oversight in social science, which some argue is in most cases unlikely to involve significant harm to participants. While […]
“NOW’s interest in pharmaceutical gender equity seems to have disappeared with its funding.”
There’s a remarkable piece on the Hastings Center’s blog by Alycia Hogenmiller about a drug called Addyi. Addyi is a drug that doesn’t work to treat a condition that doesn’t exist, pushed by campaigners who are actually industry shills. Sprout Pharmaceuticals, run by Cindy and Robert Whitehead, was determined to obtain regulatory approval for flibanserin […]
A Plutocratic Proposal: An Ethical Way for Rich Patients to Pay for a Place on a Clinical Trial
Guest Post: Alexander Masters and Dominic Nutt Paper: A Plutocratic Proposal: an ethical way for rich patients to pay for a place on a clinical trial Is it ethically possible to fund a clinical trial by charging the participants? We believe we have discovered a way to do it. Our suggested method has, as far as […]
Breakthrough Immunotherapies Seem Like a Dream Come True for Children with Leukemia
Guest Post: Nancy Jecker, Aaron Wightman, Abby Rosenberg, Doug Diekema Paper: From protection to entitlement: selecting research subjects for early phase clinical trials involving breakthrough therapies A breakthrough therapy to cure cancer in children suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a dream for many families. New immunotherapies appear to make this dream a reality. Such […]
Individually-Randomized Controlled Trials of Vaccines Against the Next Outbreak
Guest Post: Nir Eyal, Marc Lipsitch Paper: Vaccine testing for emerging infections: the case for individual randomisation The humbling experience of international response to Ebola taught the world a thing or two on preparing for Zika and for other emerging infections. Some of those lessons pertain to vaccine development against emerging infections. One lesson was […]
The Deadly Business of an Unregulated Global Stem Cell Market
Guest Post: The deadly business of an unregulated global stem cell industry Tereza Hendl and Tamra Lysaght In our paper, we report on the case of a 75-year old Australian woman who died in December 2013 from complications of an autologous stem cell procedure. This case was tragic and worth reporting to the medical ethics community […]