Adventures in Ethics and Science

Location, location, location: ethical considerations in where to run a clinical trial.

Category: Ethical research

A day later than promised, let's kick off our discussion of "Research Rashomon: Lessons from the Cameroon Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Trial Site" (PDF). The case study concerns a clinical trial of whether tenofovir, an antiretroviral drug, could prevent HIV infection. Before...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 7:24 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Coming Monday: our discussion the case of a halted international clinical trial in Cameroon.

Category: Communication

Almost a month ago, I told you about a pair of new case studies released by The Global Campaign for Microbicides which examine why a pair of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) clinical trials looking at the effectiveness of antiretrovirals in preventing...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 11:47 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Two new case studies on international clinical trials (and a plan to read them together).

Category: Communication

Earlier this week, I found out about a pair of new case studies being released by The Global Campaign for Microbicides. These cases examine why a pair of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) clinical trials looking at the effectiveness of microbicides antiretrovirals...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 3:14 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

A glimpse into how not to conduct an ethical drug trial.

Category: Current events

The Independent reports that drug giant Pfizer has agreed to pay a $75 million settlement nine years after Nigerian parents whose children died in a drug trial brought legal action against the company. It's the details of that drug trial...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 3:53 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

ScienceOnline'09: Diversity in science, online and off.

Category: Globalizing science

There were some really good discussions of ally work in the gender in science session led by Zuska, Alice, and Abel and in the race in science session led by Danielle Lee and AcmeGirl. One of the issues that has...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 10:50 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Help jailed AIDS researchers in Iran.

You know what makes an already scary world a lot scarier? When a government decides it's a crime for disease researchers to do their job. From Declan Butler: Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 12:10 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The world is flat. Your adult edibles are adulterated.

Maybe you heard about the melamine contamination issue when tainted pet food started killing pets. But, if you don't have a pet, maybe you didn't worry so much. Or maybe you noticed when tainted infant formula started sending infants to...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 12:05 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Prizes for women. Progress for women?

2008 is the tenth year of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards to remarkable female scientists from around the world. Indeed, our sister-site, ScienceBlogs.de, covered this year's award ceremony and is celebrating women in science more generally with a...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 12:01 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Medical research with 'legacy samples' raises ethical questions.

In the July 18, 2008 issue of Science, I noticed a news item, "Old Samples Trip Up Tokyo Team": A University of Tokyo team has retracted a published research paper because it apparently failed to obtain informed consent from tissue...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 6:42 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Research with vulnerable populations: considering the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (part 2).

In an earlier post, I looked at a research study by Nelson et al. [1] on how the cognitive development of young abandoned children in Romania was affected by being raised in institutional versus foster care conditions. Specifically, I examined...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 2:43 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks