Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.
When talking to physicians about practice variation, “Why does hospital A have higher cesarean rates than Hospital B?” is likely to be more effective than “Why does Doctor A have higher cesarean rates than Doctor B?”
Some commentators say comparative trials of FDA-approved drugs are overburdened by current Common Rule regulations and that researchers should not be required to obtain explicit consent for participation in the most innocuous of these trials.
Physicians who choose rural practice are called upon to deliver care that they have limited experience with, most notably in emergency situations when they are the most skilled people around.
Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD, MA and Ruth R. Faden, PhD, MPH
Participation in a research study—in which there are rigorous standards and close monitoring—may be a safer context for the use of medications in pregnancy than the clinical setting, where the evidence base is lacking.
In reports of industry-funded studies that compared the ocular hypotensive efficacy of topical prostaglandins, conclusions in the article abstracts differed from the results of the main outcome measure 62 percent of the time.