Belmont Revisited: Ethical Principles for Research with Human Subjects

Book Reviews / /

The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was created in 1974 and, after much deliberation (including four days at the Smithsonian Institution’s Belmont Conference Center), released its recommendations in April, 1979. The Belmont Report, after 25 years, is reconsidered in this book by authors prominent in bioethics, economics, law, medicine, medical ethics, philosophy, public health, public policy, and sociology. Three of these authors — Albert R. Jonsen, Patricia King, and Karen Lebacqz — served as members of the National Commission, while Tom L. Beauchamp was assigned the task of writing the original document.

The ...read more

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Fifty Years After the Declaration: The United Nations’ Record on Human Rights

Book Reviews / /

With the recently approved Human Rights Council replacing the widely discredited United Nations’ Human Rights Commission, Fifty Years After the Declaration:  The United Nations’ Record on Human Rights is a timely and, indeed, a necessary read.  Whatever one’s interpretation of the United Nations’ beginnings, history, or current functioning, a retrospective consideration of that body’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published in 1948, is a task worthy of the time required to digest this short work.

Having experienced two world wars in little more than thirty years’ time, those who composed the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 were ...read more

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Identity is in the details

Genomic & Genetics Issues / /

D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A.

Executive Director

June 2009

Privacy and research are two major concerns in discussions of biobanks.  They are important in another arena as well.  Whenever we are patients in a medical office or a hospital, medical records are created.  Whenever we have blood, other body fluids, or tissue taken, the remnants after testing are usually stored.   Neither of these facts constitutes news.   Novel uses of such information and samples, however, is a newsworthy subject, even if it is seldom read in the popular press.

In 1996, the US Congress made a law, the goal of which was to protect ...read more

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A Conversation with Peter A. Lawler (Part II)

Medicine & Health / /
(first published on 17 September 2008 at http://bioethics.com/?p=5344)

Peter A. Lawler, Ph.D., is Dana Professor and Chair of the Department of Government and International Studies at Berry College, in Georgia, and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A., is Executive Director of The Tennessee Center for Bioethics & Culture.

Riley: The subject is organ transplantation, and we have looked at the situation in the United States. Now let’s go beyond the borders of the US. There is certainly a market in a number of countries, one of which is India. There, often a donor (for lack of a ...read more

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A Conversation with Peter A. Lawler (Part I)

Medicine & Health / /
(first published 31 July 2008 at www.bioethics.com)

An Interview by D. Joy Riley, M.D., M.A.

Dr. Peter A. Lawler, Ph.D., is Dana Professor and Chair of the Department of Government and International Studies at Berry College, in Georgia, and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics

D. Joy Riley: Today’s subject is organ transplantation. There are tens of thousands of people on the list in the United States, needing organ transplantation. This is an area of interest for you, I understand.

Peter A. Lawler: This is a tough issue. There are two ways of dealing with this: dialysis or transplantation. Dialysis is a horrible way to ...read more

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Presuming Consent and More

Medicine & Health / /

>(first published on 10 August 2007 at www.bioethics.com; used with permission)

A debate regarding organ donation is getting underway in the UK: it is a debate about “presumed consent.” Presumed consent means that although no permission form is signed, and there is no documented mandated discussion with anyone, a deceased person’s organs can be harvested by the state for transplantation. Another name for this is “opting out”: your organs will be harvested after death unless you have specifically requested that such not occur. The current laws in the UK are revisions of the Human Tissue Act in 1961, and are voluntary, or ...read more

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