When I started reading this, I had a feeling I'd come to the sentence highlighted in red below:
"Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, takes a middle ground. Although he understands the arguments of people like Dr. Narayan, he said, concerned doctors are not the only ones who want the research to go forward. Drug companies and the makers of medical devices have a financial stake in seeing that the research is done.
We are now guinea pigs for big pharma at the times we are most vulnerable--in emergency situations when we can't speak for ourselves. Wonder who will win out? Good medicine or big money? See more about this below. Click on the link to read the whole sad white wash in the NYTimes. Linda
"The Food and Drug Administration regulations, which took effect on Friday, apply only in carefully circumscribed situations. The patients must have a life-threatening condition, like a severe head injury, and must be unable to say whether they want to be part of a study. They would be selected only if it was not feasible to obtain consent from a relative.
"Furthermore, the community in which the research is done must be notified about the study, and the research design must have been reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
"Even the most ardent supporters of the new regulations say they understand the seriousness of what they have done. They have repealed a principle that dates back to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi doctors after World War II, when American judges were agonizing over rules that might prevent doctors from ever again using human subjects in horrendous experiments. The judges wrote a code of ethics, the Nuremberg Code, whose first principle was that no one should ever be forced to take part in a medical experiment. ''The voluntary consent of the human subject is essential,'' they wrote.
Via the Undernews of the Progressive Review
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