Should Society Allow Research Ethics Boards to Be Run As For-Profit Enterprises?

Ezekiel J Emanuel, Trudo Lemmens and Carl Elliot

PLOS Medicine, 2006, vol. 3, issue 7, 1-

Abstract: : An important mechanism for protecting human research participants is the prior approval of a clinical study by a research ethics board, known in the United States as an institutional review board (IRB). Traditionally, IRBs have been run by volunteer committees of scientists and clinicians working in the academic medical centers where the studies they review are being carried out. However, for-profit organizations are increasingly being hired to conduct ethics reviews. Proponents of for-profit IRBs argue that these IRBs are just as capable as academic IRBs at providing high-quality ethics reviews. Critics argue that for-profit IRBs have a conflict of interest because they generate their income from clients who have a direct financial interest in obtaining approval. Emanuel argues that for-profit ethics review boards can provide high quality reviews, but Lemmens and Elliot believe that such boards have a conflict of interest.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0030309 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/fil ... 30309&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pmed00:0030309

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030309

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Medicine from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosmedicine ().