Article of Note

Triggers for research ethics consultation
Havard M, Cho MK, Magnus D.
Sci Transl Med. 2012 Jan 25;4(118):118cm1.

This article, from the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, discusses when research ethics consultation can be helpful to an IRB. The authors suggest that research ethics consultants provide important information on complex ethical issues when the IRB does not have sufficient expertise in an area of science, such as innovative research, tissue and DNA banking, incidental findings, and clinical trials involving stem cells. The authors believe that research ethics consultants can provide cutting edge ethical analysis for situations that lie outside the scope of existing regulation, and for which more than one reasonable approach exists.

Link to abstract: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/4/118/118cm1.short  accessed 2/1/2012