Several hundred people attended yesterday's conference "Research with Human Participants: The National Debates" at the University of Minnesota, with hundreds more participating by webcast. Renowned scholars and policymakers discussed the complexities of obtaining informed consent, the nuances of conflicts of interest, and the ways those engaged in research can and should build a more robust infrastructure for clinical trials.
Dr. Amos Deinard, Jr., a pediatrician on the faculty of the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health, was recently honored with a lifetime achievement award from the American Public Health Association – in dentistry. Dr. Deinard is the first non-oral health practitioner to ever receive this award.
An editorial in the January, 2016 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics responds to recent football safety recommendations for children and teens from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Dr.
When President George W. Bush restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in 2001, he wasn't looking to expand state funding of this research, but that's exactly what happened. An article in Kaiser Health News recounts how, after the ban, several states started their own stem cell programs or offered economic incentives to local scientists and companies.
Each year, the Consortium awards funding to qualified University of Minnesota graduate and professional students for projects related to the societal implications of problems in health, environment, and the life sciences. The Request for Proposals (RFP) for summer 2016 and academic year 2016-17 is now available. Student organizations may apply for these grants, which total $35,000 with a maximum individual award of $7,000.
Proposed new revisions to the Common Rule on research with human participants, which governs federal policy and regulations, include recommendations resulting from a major, NIH grant led by the Consortium.
An NIH-funded, blue-ribbon project group has just published the first consensus recommendations on a question that has vexed researchers for serveral years: Should researchers share an individual study participant’s private results with family members who may share a genetic risk? A new
An article in Nature describes efforts by the US government to determine whether it should continue to ban federal funding for studies that could make some viruses more dangerous. Writer Sara Reardon notes, such research "can help scientists to answer important questions about how a microbe evolved or how to kill it.
A team at Stanford University has developed a new drug to fight deadly Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections. Each year, the superbug kills 29,000 Americans and makes 450,000 sick. Rather than destroying helpful bacteria along with C. difficile toxins, as antibiotics do, tests in mice show the new compound prevents damage to the inside of the intestine, thereby avoiding the diarrhea and sepsis that causes most fatalities.
An article in today's Wall Street Journal describes one family's struggles regarding how much DNA information to share with each other. Identical twins Kathy Giusti and Karen Andrews have been diagnosed with two different types of cancer and hold divergent opinions, leading to tough questions about how much each family member wanted to share, wanted to know, and the privacy issues and sense of obligation the situation evokes.