Guest Post by Nir Eyal Re: Special Issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics on the ethics and challenges of an HIV cure For most patients with HIV who have access to antiretroviral treatment and use it properly, that treatment works well. But the holy grail of HIV research remains finding a cure. Sometimes that […]
Category: Research Ethics
HIV Cure Research and The Dual Aims of the Informed Consent Process
Guest Post: Danielle Bromwich and Joseph Millum Paper: Informed Consent to HIV Research Special Issue: The benefit/risk ratio challenge in clinical research, and the case of HIV cure A cure for HIV would be tremendously valuable. Approximately 37 million people worldwide are HIV-positive and 15 million are currently on antiretroviral therapy. Until recently it was assumed […]
A Hot Take on a Cold Body
It’s good to see Nils’ post about the recent UK cryonics ruling getting shared around quite a bit – so it should. I thought I’d throw in my own voice, too. About 18 months ago, Imogen Jones and I wrote a paper musing on some of the ethical and legal dimensions of Christopher Priest’s The Prestige. […]
Dissenting from care.data: an analysis of opt out forms
Guest Post: Paraskevas Vezyridis Article: Dissenting from Care.data: An Analysis of Opt-out Forms In our article, which is part of a wider project examining the technical, social and ethical challenges of big data in primary care, we simply wanted to explore how varied opt out forms can be when there is no standardised form available. […]
The End is Not What it Seems – Feasibility of Conducting Prospective Research in Critically Ill, Dying Patients.
Guest Post by Amanda Van Beinum Re: Feasibility of conducting prospective observational research on critically ill, dying patients in the intensive care unit Collecting information about how people die in the intensive care unit is important. Observations about what happens during the processes of withdrawal of life sustaining therapies (removal of breathing machines and drugs used to maintain […]
Where to Publish and Not to Publish in Bioethics
Guest Post by Stefan Eriksson & Gert Helgesson, Uppsala University * Note: this is a cross-posting from The Ethics Blog, hosted by the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB) at Uppsala University. The link to the original article is here. Re-posted with permission of the authors. Introduction Allegedly, there are over 8,000 so-called predatory […]
Circumcision and Sexual Function: Bad Science Reporting Misleads Parents
by Brian D. Earp / (@briandavidearp) Introduction Another day, another round of uncritical media coverage of an empirical study about circumcision and sexual function. That’s including from the New York Times, whose Nicholas Bakalar has more or less recycled the content of a university press release without incorporating any skeptical analysis from other scientists. That’s par for […]
A Tool to Help Address Key Ethical Issues in Research
Guest post by Rebecca H. Li and Holly Fernandez Lynch One of the most important responsibilities of a clinical project lead at a biotech company or an academic research team is to generate clinical trial protocols. The protocol dictates how a trial will be conducted and details background information on prior research, scientific objectives, study […]
The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp) * Note: this article was first published online at Quillette magazine. The official version is forthcoming in the HealthWatch Newsletter; see http://www.healthwatch-uk.org/. Introduction Science and medicine have done a lot for the world. Diseases have been eradicated, rockets have been sent to the moon, and convincing, causal explanations have been given for a whole range […]
What should Investigators be Doing with Unexpected Findings in Brain Imaging Research?
Guest Post by Caitlin Cole Incidental findings in brain imaging research are common. Investigators can discover these unexpected findings of potential medical significance in up to 70% of their research scans. However, there are no standards to guide investigators as to whether they should actively search for these findings or which, if any, they should […]