Rethinking Risks to Human Subjects in Genetic Research

Rethinking risks to human subjects in genetic research.

Although the concern of biomedical researchers for the well-being of human subjects is as old as research itself, the modern era has a well-defined beginning. The horrors conducted by the Nazi doctors under the name of research led directly to the drafting in 1946 of the Nuremberg Code (1949; Annas and Grodin 1992). Only 500 words long, the document holds a hallowed place in western culture. No...

Balancing Uncertain Risks and Benefits in Human Subjects Research

Human research subjects as human research workers.

Biomedical research involving human subjects has traditionally been treated as a unique endeavor, presenting special risks and demanding special protections. But in several ways, the regulatory scheme governing human subjects research is counter-intuitively less protective than the labor and employment laws applicable to many workers. This Article relies on analogical and legal reasoning to dem...

Limits to research risks.

Risk-benefit assessment is a routine requirement for research ethics committees that review and oversee biomedical research with human subjects. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how to weigh and balance risks to research participants against the social benefits that flow from generating biomedical knowledge. In this article, we address the question of whether there are any reasonable criteria f...

Computer Security Research with Human Subjects: Risks, Benefits and Informed Consent

Computer security research frequently entails studying real computer systems and their users; studying deployed systems is critical to understanding real world problems, so is having would-be users test a proposed solution. In this paper we focus on three key concepts in regard to ethics: risks, benefits, and informed consent. Many researchers are required by law to obtain the approval of an et...