Bioethics consulting services provide valuable oversight for researchers

When scientists run into ethical dilemmas in their research, they typically turn to institutional review boards (IRBs) for advice. Increasingly, a new kind of service – that of formal ethics consultancies – is adding another layer of counseling for scientists to sort out questions in research protocol.

Ethics consultancies are organized by bioethicists for researchers to consult with when they encounter ethical ambiguities in their work. They differ from more traditional IRBs in that they address a wider range of issues, from small complications to the larger problems, and they are not limited to the regulatory processes that IRBs are bound to. Additionally, because they are typically run by a team of ethicists, these services are able to provide more comprehensive, ethics-driven advice to researchers. According to an article in Nature:

“Unlike IRBs, consultants can provide guidance throughout a study — not just at the point of regulatory review — and do so in a non-confrontational advice-giving capacity. They offer ‘an open space for talking about research ethics in a way that is not driven by the regulatory environment,’ says Marion Danis, chief of the bioethics consultation service at the NIH Clinical Center, a research hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.”

The purpose of ethics consultancies is not to replace IRBs, but rather to work alongside them and to provide oversight.  While some researchers argue that this extra service is superfluous to IRBs, which ideally should include trained bioethicists, others – including bioethicist Steven Miles of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis – believe that separate consultation is vital to fully consider all of the issues that arise over the course of a study.

“For innovative research designs, you need some independent person to say, ‘Well, let’s step back and think about this not just from the standpoint of do the regulations permit it, but does it fulfill the spirit of what people want done with the public research enterprise?'”

 

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