Suchergebnisse

The idea of abolishing or simplifying government regulations has a large following in Washington at the moment. As Reagan and his minions start to prune the growth of the past twenty years, we must hope that they are able to distinguish between the healthy growth which provides needed support and the unnecessary growth which strangles necessary initiatives. However, there is one area where we need more regulation rather than less, namely, biomedical research. In calling for more regulation in biomedical research, I do not mean the imposition of outside controls by allegedly ignorant and insensitive bureaucrats (although I think some outside control is unfortunately necessary), but rather the control which scientists themselves are meant to exercise over their work. I am calling for more attention to the regulation and control of experimental variables, such control being ever more important as the questions asked probe deeper and deeper into the subtle workings of biological systems.

In view of major violations of international ethical codes during biomedical research in developing countries, local and regional regulation frameworks and legislation are needed to interpret international guidelines

A meeting on Marine Biomedical Research, sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institutes of Health and the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History, was attended by approximately 125 scientists, directors and representatives from many of the country's marine biological laboratories, and government agencies whose interests and responsibilites are in the marine biology and health areas. The purpose of the meeting was to explore the undeveloped research opportunities in the area of marine biology for the advancement of our understanding of human health problems and to provide information on the current status of marine biology laboratories. The meeting was devoted to presentations and discussions in four general areas: (1)Marine Species as Models for Human Disease; (2)Environmental Carcinogenesis and Mutagenesis; (3)Human Health and the Marine Environment--infectious agents and naturally occurring and foreign toxins; and (4)Drugs from the seas. Representatives from twelve of the country's approximatley 40 marine laboratories discussed their organization, developmental history, scientific programs, facilities, and present status of their support. The presentations served as a background and stimulated very lively analytical and constructive discussions of the undeveloped research and education potential residing in the marine environment and biological laboratories for a better understanding of many human health problems; some scientific areas that should be developed to realize this potential; and the needs and problems of marine laboratories that require attention and support if they are to survive and realize their possibilities.

Enhanced knowledge of the nature and causes of mental disorder have led increasingly to a need for the recruitment of 'cognitively vulnerable' participants in biomedical research. These individuals often fall into the 'grey area' between obvious decisional competence and obvious decisional incompetence and, as a result, may not be recognised as having the legal capacity to make such decisions themselves. At the core of the ethical debate surrounding the participation of cognitively vulnerable individuals in research is when, if at all, we should judge them decisionally and legally competent to consent to or refuse research participation on their own behalf and when they should be judged incompetent in this respect. In this book, the author develops a novel justificatory framework for making judgments of decisional competence to consent to biomedical research with reference to five groups of cognitively vulnerable individuals - older children and adolescents, adults with intellectual disabilities, adults with depression, adults with schizophrenia and adults with dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. Using this framework, the author argues that we can make morally defensible judgments about the competence or incompetence of a potential participant to give contemporaneous consent to research by having regard to whether a judgment of competence would be more harmful to the 'generic rights' of the potential participant than a judgment of incompetence. The argument is also used to justify an account of supported decision-making in research, and applied to evaluate the extent to which this approach is evident in existing ethical guidelines and legal provisions. The book will be of interest to bioethicists as well as psychiatrists and academic medical lawyers interested in normative questions raised by the concepts of competence and capacity.

The 2001 U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) Biomedical Informatics Roadmap Meeting was devoted to developing a strategic plan in four focus areas: Hospital and Clinical Informatics, E-Health, Combat Health Informatics, and Bioinformatics and Biomedical Computation. The driving force of this Roadmap Meeting was the recent accelerated pace of change in biomedical informatics in which emerging technologies have the potential to affect significantly the Army research portfolio and investment strategy in these focus areas. The meeting was structured so that the first two days were devoted to presentations from experts in the field, including representatives from the three services, other government agencies, academia, and the private sector, and the morning of the last day was devoted to capturing specific biomedical informatics research needs in the four focus areas. This white paper summarizes the key findings and recommendations and should be a powerful tool for the crafting of future requests for proposals to help align USAMRMC new strategic research investments with new developments and emerging technologies.

This book deals with the international assessment and regulation of biomedical research. In its chapters, some of the leading figures in today's bioethics address questions centred on global development, scientific advances, and vulnerability.Values In Bioethics (ViB) makes available original philosophical books in all areas of bioethics, including medical and nursing ethics, health care ethics, research ethics, environmental ethics, and global bioethics

Our conclusion from all of this work and study is that not just a small part, but that most of the suffering undergone by laboratory animals in "unnecessary" under the terms of the pain provisions of the Rogers-Javits bill. Granted, it will take some time and effort to bring about the necessary interpretations of these provisions. The Act, when passed, offers us the medium through which to obtain such interpretations. This unnecessary suffering results mostly from the indifference, and from the inertia and the lack of proper scientific training and technical knowledge, of many of those conducting laboratory animal experiments and tests. If only this unnecessary suffering were eliminated, I sincerely believe that 95 percent of all the suffering of laboratory animals would be eliminated. Who would want to wait another hundred years to attain 100 percent elimination, when we can get 95 percent soon?