Bench-to-bedside review: Human subjects research – are more standards needed?

doi:10.1186/cc5114

Critical Care
Volume 10
Issue 6

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This article is part of a series on Translational Research, edited by Dr John Kellum.

Review

Bench-to-bedside review: Human subjects research – are more standards needed?

David T Huang¹ and Mehrnaz Hadian²

¹CRISMA Laboratory, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, 641 Scaife Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA

²Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, 641 Scaife Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA

author email corresponding author email

Critical Care 2006, 10:244doi:10.1186/cc5114


Published:	15 December 2006

See related commentary by Chenaud et al., http://ccforum.com/content/11/1/110

Abstract

There are many controversial issues surrounding ethics in study design and conduct of human subjects research. In this review we briefly touch on the origin of ethics in clinical research and how the current regulations and standards came into practice. We then discuss current controversies regarding informed consent, conflicts of interest, institutional review boards, and other relevant issues such as innovative procedures and quality improvement projects. The question of whether we need more standards is a very important yet challenging one to which there is no simple answer. We address this question by reviewing and commenting on relevant literature. We conclude that what is needed are not more standards per se, but rather refinement and uniformity of current standards, and their interpretation and application both to protect human subjects and to advance medicine.