Check out the June 12th edition of the Petrie-Flom Center’s biweekly e-newsletter for the latest on events, affiliate news and scholarship, and job and fellowship opportunities in health law policy and bioethics.
Featured in this edition:
NOW HIRING!
Petrie-Flom Center/Harvard Catalyst Fellow in Clinical Research Ethics
This is a newly created full-time position for a post-doctoral employee fellow in clinical research ethics to support the work of the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School in its collaboration with the Regulatory Foundations, Ethics, and Law Program of Harvard Catalyst, Harvard’s Clinical and Translational Science Center. The fellow must have strong knowledge of clinical research and its regulation, with particular interest in the regulatory, ethical, and practical aspects associated with recruitment and retention of research participants. The position will provide the opportunity to interact with a wide range of stakeholders, such as IRB members, administrators, investigators, institutional leadership, patient advocates, and other community members. This position allows for a maximum of 10% effort in furtherance of the fellow’s own research agenda(s) in related fields. Illustrative projects include the following:
- Defining the clinical trials recruitment problem, including cataloguing various barriers to recruitment, outstanding data needs, and possible solutions, and developing a research agenda
- Evaluating whether there are ways to prioritize trials and allocate research participants as a scarce resource
- Considering innovative trial designs as a potential mechanism to address the recruitment problem
- Developing a recruitment/retention toolkit to help investigators develop successful recruitment/retention plans
- Addressing the proper parameters of remuneration to subjects
- Developing surveys to learn more about participant motivations, expectations, and concerns
- Conducting additional empirical research to develop knowledge that can improve clinical trial recruitment/retention
For more information and to apply, view the full job description!
For more on news and events at Petrie-Flom, see the full newsletter.
I think the FDA stance reflects the history of infected blood in our supply and the subsequent outcry of patients received the infected blood. Surrounding the time period that AIDS was first identified, politics, financial structure of blood organizations, and American culture pushed forth agendas that were not focused on acknowledging the known facts. Today there is still a stigma surrounding lifestyles of many of those infected, and officials at the FDA grapple with the possible backlash of endorsing a more sensible, evidence-based approach to changing the system. The old adage ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…. ‘ seems to apply here. That said, the ethical and moral response is aligned with your researched comments. Ethical actions are a process and unfortunately require time and education to experience change. The continued efforts of those challenging current behavior is necessary for this change to occur. Without ‘squeaking the wheel’ people tend to become complacent in thoughts and actions. Keep it up!!