Petrie-Flom Center Launches New Book on Human Subjects Research Regulation

Human Subjects Research Regulations Book CoverThe Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to announce publication of Human Subjects Research Regulation: Perspectives on the Future (MIT Press 2014), co-edited by Petrie-Flom Center Faculty Director, I. Glenn Cohen, and Executive Director, Holly Fernandez Lynch.  This edited volume stems from the Center’s 2012 annual conference, which brought together leading experts in a conversation about whether and how the current system of human subjects research regulation in the U.S. ought to change to fit evolving trends, fill substantial gaps, and respond to identified shortcomings.

The book is currently available from MIT Press and Amazon, in hardcover and paperback.  We will be hosting a book discussion at Harvard Law School on October 22, and in Baltimore on December 5 at Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIMR)’s annual Advancing Ethical Research Conference.  Details will be announced shortly.

 From the book jacket:

 The current framework for the regulation of human subjects research emerged largely in reaction to the horrors of Nazi human experimentation, revealed at the Nuremburg trials, and the Tuskegee syphilis study, conducted by U.S. government researchers from 1932 to 1972. This framework, combining elements of paternalism with efforts to preserve individual autonomy, has remained fundamentally unchanged for decades. Yet, as this book documents, it has significant flaws—including its potential to burden important research, overprotect some subjects and inadequately protect others, generate inconsistent results, and lag behind developments in how research is conducted. Invigorated by the U.S. government’s first steps toward change in over twenty years, Human Subjects Research Regulation brings together the leading thinkers in this field from ethics, law, medicine, and public policy to discuss how to make the system better. The result is a collection of novel ideas—some incremental, some radical—for the future of research oversight and human subject protection.

After reviewing the history of U.S. research regulations, the contributors consider such topics as risk-based regulation; research involving vulnerable populations (including military personnel, children, and prisoners); the relationships among subjects, investigators, sponsors, and institutional review boards; privacy, especially regarding biospecimens and tissue banking; and the possibility of fundamental paradigm shifts.

Contributors
 Adam Braddock, Alexander Morgan Capron, Ellen Wright Clayton, I. Glenn Cohen, Susan Cox, Amy L. Davis, Hilary Eckert, Barbara J. Evans, Nir Eyal, Heidi Li Feldman, Benjamin Fombonne, Elisa A. Hurley, Ana S. Iltis, Gail H. Javitt, Greg Koski, Nicole Lockhart, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Michael McDonald, Michelle N. Meyer, Osagie K. Obasogie, Efthimios Parasidis, Govind Persad, Rosamond Rhodes, Suzanne M. Rivera, Zachary M. Schrag, Seema K. Shah, Jeffrey Skopek, Laura Stark, Patrick Taylor, Anne Townsend, Carol Weil, Brett A. Williams, Leslie E. Wolf

For a more information, including the full table of contents, check out the book on the MIT Press website

Art Caplan: Facebook Experiment Used Silicon Valley Trickery

Art Caplan has a new opinion piece on NBCNews about a recently published study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where a  Facebook scientist teamed up with two academics to subtly tweak the news feeds of nearly 700,000 Facebook users.

From the piece:

“The question of whether or not an experiment is ethical hinges upon the question of “informed consent.” Generally, this means that a subject in a study needs to have basic information about the study he’s participating in, understand the nature of the experiment and its risks and benefits, and have the ability to withhold his consent without fear of harm or retribution.

The authors of the study argue that they obtained subject consent: Their manipulation of Facebook users’ emotions was “… consistent with Facebook’s Data Use Policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research.” This is nonsense; it’s not informed consent. It is an old Silicon Valley trick for systematically eliminating the legal rights of its customers.”

Read the full article.

A More Transparent System for Clinical Trials Data in Europe – Mind the Gaps!

By Timo Minssen

Following the approval of the European Parliament (EP) earlier last month, the Council of the European Union (the Council) adopted on 14 April 2014 a “Regulation on clinical trials on medicinal products for human use” repealing Directive 2001/20/EC.  As described in a press-release, the new law:

“aims to remedy the shortcomings of the existing Clinical Trials Directive by setting up a uniform framework for the authorization of clinical trials by all the member states concerned with a given single assessment outcome. Simplified reporting procedures, and the possibility for the Commission to do checks, are among the law’s key innovations.”

Moreover, and very importantly, the Regulation seeks to improve transparency by requiring pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers to publish the results of all their European clinical trials in a publicly-accessible EU database. In contrast to earlier stipulations which only obliged sponsor to publish the end-results of their clinical trials, the new law requires full clinical study reports to be published after a decision on – or withdrawal of – marketing authorization applications. Sponsors who do not comply with these requirements will face fines.

These groundbreaking changes will enter into force 20 days after publication in the Official Journal of the EU. However, it will first apply six months after a new EU portal for the submission of data on clinical trials and the above mentioned EU database have become fully functional. Since this is expected to take at least two years, the Regulation will apply in 2016 at the earliest (with an opt-out choice available until 2018).

Read More

On Patents, Patients and the Public Interest

By Michael Young

Earlier this month, a U.S. District Court in Delaware issued an injunction to bar sales of a minimally invasive Medtronic replacement heart valve that putatively infringed on competitor’s Edwards Lifesciences valve system patent.  After this ruling was issued, Medtronic filed an emergency motion requesting stay and expedited appeal of this injunction, contending that that “if the injunction were permitted to go into effect, treatable patients [with aortic annuli larger than 25mm for whom Edwards’ valve is not suited] may unnecessarily die in the name of already expired patent rights. Put simply, the calamity to public health that would result from the injunction is premised on a legally improper extension of patent rights” (Medtronic v. Edwards, 08-CV-0091, 2014).  Shortly thereafter, The Federal Court Circuit of Appeals agreed to postpone the injunction and to expedite Medtronic’s appeal.

While still unraveling, this case offers unique insights into the important yet often overlooked dialectic between patient safety and patent rights.

Read More

Lax Enforcement of Vaccine Laws Put Young Adults at Risk

The news about the return of dangerous “childhood” illnesses gets worse and worse. Columbus, Ohio reports an outbreak of 225 cases—with over 50% students at Ohio State University.   It is probably no coincidence that Ohio State recommends but does not require students (outside of those in healthcare settings) be vaccinated in order to attend class.   It’s not just Mumps.  We are seeing cases of preventable diseases like measles and mumps and whooping cough because of parental decisions not to immunize their children but there is increasing evidence that the immunizations most adults received as infants or young children wear off—leaving the population at large vulnerable to infection once an outbreak occurs. Science Daily just reported a confirmed case of a fully vaccinated young woman contracting measles.  The CDC has not yet recommended that adults get booster shots for Mumps and Measles—although they have in some circumstances for Whooping Cough and Polio.  But the more likely it is for a person to be exposed to these diseases, the more important it is to be fully vaccinated.

So why is the law to blame here?  Read More

Killing for Species Health

In the past few months, the Copenhagen Zoo has killed a giraffe and four lions in order to protect the genetic health of their breeding populations, generating significant international backlash and highlighting difficult questions about the value of species preservation.

The international controversy surrounding the zoo’s actions began in February, when it killed a healthy 18-month old giraffe with a bolt pistol, performed a public autopsy on his body (video), and then fed his remains to the zoo’s lions and other big cats in front of the public (video).  A bolt pistol was used, rather than an injection, so that his meat would be safe to eat.  A statement from the zoo explained that it had decided to kill this giraffe because his genes were “well represented in the breeding programme,” such that allowing him to grow into an adult and breed was “unwanted.”  Zoo officials turned down adoption offers from other zoos on the grounds that this would have left open the door to inbreeding and potentially removed a place for a giraffe whose genetic makeup was more valuable in terms of future offspring in captive breeding programs.  (The statement also addresses a variety of other interesting “health law” questions, such as “Why are the giraffes not given contraceptives?”).

The controversy gained further momentum two weeks ago, when the zoo announced that it had killed four lions—a 16 year-old male lion, a 14 year-old lioness, and their cubs—to clear the path for a newly arrived young male lion.  (It is unclear whether these specific lions were among those who had previously eaten the giraffe).   A statement from the zoo explained that it had decided to kill these lions based on several population-level concerns, including that the 16 year-old male might have someday mated with his female offspring creating a problem of inbreeding, or that the new young male might have mated with the 14 year-old lioness instead of younger females with greater reproductive fitness.

While the idea that these types of killings can be justified on the grounds that they protect the health of the genetic populations of which the individual animals are a part is fairly common, it is unclear whether “health” is actually an appropriate concept to apply to an entity such as an animal’s species.    Read More

Is Finding Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Worth 52,192 years of children’s lives?

[Note: This post is meant to be provocative and press a public policy question in the most thought-provoking way possible. Losing a loved one is among the most heart-wrenching experiences in a life time and my heart goes out to all those with loved ones on the flight waiting for answers. But one of the major points of this post is to highlight our tendency to spend more on identified lives not statistical ones for just these kinds of reasons and ask if it is justified.]

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is likely run to “Hundreds of Millions of Dollars” according to the most recent estimate from ABC News. This is based on extrapolation of the difficulties involved and the experience of searching for Air France 447 which cost 50 million USD. Let’s take a conservative estimate of 100 million USD to find the plane, probably on the low end. Let us put aside the possibility that even with that expenditure the plane will never be found, again an assumption that counts against the argument I will be making. This is 100 million dollars spent, roughly speaking, on “helping.” It is very unlikely that there are any survivors, so I don’t think this can reasonably be thought of as “life-saving” (I will assume it is not, but if it were  that wouldn’t make that much of a difference in the argument I will offer though it will require confronting the question of Should the Numbers Count for life saving?).

Instead the money is being spent (1) to satisfy the somewhat diffuse curiosity/grief of those who have watched this in the media, (2) to give answers to the very deep need for closure of the loved ones of those flying on these planes, and (3) to learn about what went wrong and potentially determine whether there is a systemic problem with these planes that might affect other planes.

All of those are worthy goals. But are they worth 100 million USD? In the category of “helping” or “life-saving” what else could we do with the money? Let me draw on one estimate mentioned by Ezra Klein in the WaPo and Don Taylor at the Incidental Economist from a paper by Tammy Tengs “Five Hundred Life Saving Interventions and Their Cost Effectiveness

I chose the cheapest intervention, influenza vaccines for children age 5+ which is estimated to cost $1,300/life year saved in 1993 dollars. I then updated that to 2013 dollars with a conversion calculator to generate a cost of 1915.89 USD per life year saved (it may also be that this intervention is now cheaper than it was at the time of Teng’s paper). I then divided 100 million dollars by that number to get my 52,192 life years saved for children estimate. That is fairly back of the envelope and there are lots of tweaks you would do to get a more exact figure, but it is close enough to make the point: Why are we spending so much on Malaysia Airlines search when we could be saving so many lives?

Read More

Harvard Effective Altruism: Josh Greene this Tuesday

Emotion, Reason and Altruism
with Professor Joshua Greene

Tuesday, March 11th, 7 PM,
Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall
Why do people have radically different opinions as to who to help and how? How can we get along with people who seem to fundamentally disagree with us about what to want? Professor Josh Greene addresses this and more in Emotion, Reason, and Altruism.
Joshua Greene direct Harvard’s Moral Cognition Lab, which uses cutting edge cognitive neuroscience techniques to study how people actually make moral decisions, integrating thinking from philosophy, social science, and social psychology to address questions of why people disagree as much as they do, and what we can do about it.

Disclosing Genetic Risks: Lessons from the Philosophy of Language

By Michael J. Young

Earlier this month, landmark findings were published in the American Journal of Psychiatry illuminating the effect of disclosing genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease on older adults’ cognition and memory.  In a case-control study, researchers administered memory function tests to a group of known carriers of the apolipoprotein E4 allele (one of the best studied genetic risk factors for developing Alzheimer’s disease), half of whom were informed of their carrier status, and half of whom were not informed of their carrier status.  They reported “[s]ignificant genotype-by-disclosure interaction effects were observed on several memory rating scales and tests of immediate and delayed verbal recall. Older adults who knew their ε4+ genotype judged their memory more harshly and performed worse on an objective verbal memory test than did ε4+ adults who did not know. In contrast, older adults who knew their ε4− genotype judged their memory more positively than did ε4− adults who did not know…informing older adults that they have an APOE genotype associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease can have adverse consequences on their perception of their memory abilities and on their performance on objective memory tests. Similar consequences might be expected if other indices of an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease are disclosed (e.g., neuroimaging or CSF biomarkers of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.)”

These findings raise profound questions for practitioners who must make regular decisions concerning how to communicate health risk information to patients, and more fundamentally, about what principles and policies ought to govern which findings should be disclosed or disguised.

The study and its implications bear striking correlates to a set of key issues in philosophy of language relating to the meta-descriptive aspects of speech and discourse.  In a series of lectures later published as How We Do Things with Words, philosopher J.L. Austin persuasively argued against a longstanding philosophical tradition that had conceptualized language as a construct that exists solely to describe reality as it is or is imagined to be; Austin reasoned that language can serve not only to describe facts but can also serve to establish new facts by representing them as such.

Read More

The bright side of antibiotic resistance

My parent’s generation grew up in fear of a nuclear apocalypse: the cold war was raging, team USA and team USSR were competing in a frightening arms race, and people were building bomb shelters in preparation for a nuclear end to the world. That’s like so 1950’s though; what’s hot now is the environmental apocalypse. We all know about rising water levels, and some doomsayers are even warning that enough methane is about to be released from the icecaps to cause the greatest mass extinction since the dinosaurs.

Me? I’m not too concerned about either of these scenarios, but it’s not because I’m much of an optimist. It’s because I’m convinced that bugs will kill most of us before we kill ourselves.

In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, and it was being mass produced by World War II. This means it has effectively been around for at least 70 years, and it still works against a broad range of bacteria. Superb; 70 years is a hefty amount of time–enough for billions of doses to have been administered–and we’re still going strong.

But bacteria don’t care. They’re (still) here, they’re (always) evolving, get used to it.

Read More