News & Publications

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) have issued a call for the withdrawal of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which is intended to update the federal guidelines for research with human participants, also known as the Common Rule. In the view… Read more

The implacable nature of evolution means attempts to eradicate Aedes aegypti mosquitoes – the species that carries Zika virus and other diseases – are doomed to fail, according to an opinion piece in the LA Times by Prof. Marlene Zuk, PhD, of the College… Read more

Since it was revealed in 1972, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male has been considered among the most egregious violations of research ethics during the 20th century. The study began in 1932; for 40 years, researchers passively monitored hundreds of adult… Read more

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has just awarded the first-ever grant dedicated to laying the policy groundwork needed to translate genomic medicine into clinical application. The project – LawSeqSM– will convene legal, ethics and scientific experts from across the country to analyze… Read more

In 2013, Mindy Kurzer, PhD, published research demonstrating that "aerobic exercise influences the way our bodies break down estrogens to produce more of the ‘good’ metabolites that lower breast cancer risk." Kurzer, director of Consortium member center Healthy Foods,… Read more

A 2006 opinion by US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is still reverberating throughout environment regulation circles, having triggered a decade of fevered debate over how to determine which bodies of water are protected by the Clean Water Act of 1972. By positing that a waterway… Read more

Despite the promise of pharmacogenomics – selecting drugs based on a patient's genetic makeup – significant obstacles to its wide implementation remain. According to an article in Scientific American, "fewer than 10 hospitals around the country. . . are offering pharmacogenomic tests,"… Read more

Today, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it has finalized the new Nutrition Facts label for packaged foods. The changes include a refreshed design that will make it easier for consumers to spot key information such as number of calories and serving size. Reflecting… Read more

An article in the Huffington Post by Robert C. Green, MD, MPH (Harvard, Brigham and Women's Hospital) outlines the conclusions reached by a team of researchers led by Consortium chair Susan M. Wolf, JD; Gloria Petersen, PhD (Mayo) and Barbara Koenig, PhD, RN (UCSF). … Read more

A new proposal by the Obama administration would require scientists who work with human biospecimens to obtain consent from patients prior to using them in research, even when all personal information is removed. The proposed change is part of the revision of the Common Rule, the federal law… Read more