When a seriously ill mature minor and his parent disagree about his receiving an experimental intervention, who should decide what treatment he will receive?
Movements to deinstitutionalize people with mental illness and to make institutionalization more legally difficult have resulted in a lack of space and resources for the care of those with severe mental illness, and many have ended up in jails and prisons.
Registries of those considered dangerous focus wrongly on those with mental illness, who account for only 4 percent of violent acts committed in the United States.
Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin continues the debate about affirmative action in higher education. What constitutes adequate representation of a given group, and should those groups be based on race or class?
Jessie Kimbrough-Sugick, MD, MPH, Jessica Holzer, MA, and Eric B. Bass, MD, MPH
Researchers who approach community partners with an agenda already in hand are missing the point of the community-based participatory research enterprise: developing priorities for study together.
By privileging traditional research methods in forms for research protocol approval, IRBs can unknowingly allow community partners to be harmed in CBPR. Changes to the language can help ensure appropriate sensitivity and community involvement.
CBP researchers are challenged to think strategically about ways to convey their accomplishments and educate their non-CBPR peers about the nature of their research, processes not required of traditional researchers.
Elizabeth Lee Daugherty, MD, MPH and Douglas B. White, MD, MA
Opportunities to advance scientific knowledge may arise during humanitarian crises, but their presence does not justify suspension of the ethical foundations governing human subjects research.