Behind closed doors : IRBs and the making of ethical research / Laura Stark.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stark, Laura Jeanine Morris, 1975-

Series:

Morality and society

Morality and society series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Institutional review boards (Medicine)--United States--History.

Institutional review boards (Medicine).

Human experimentation in medicine--Government policy--United States.

Human experimentation in medicine.

Medical ethics--United States--History--20th century.

Medical ethics.

Research--Moral and ethical aspects--United States.

Research.

Research--Government policy--United States.

Research--Government policy.

Research--Moral and ethical aspects.

History.

Human experimentation in medicine--Government policy.

United States.

Physical Description:

229 pages : 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2012]

Summary:

Although the subject of federally mandated institutional review boards (IRBs) has been extensively debated, we actually do not know much about what takes place when they convene. The story of how IRBs work today is a story about their past as well as their present, and Behind Closed Doors is the first book to meld firsthand observations of IRB meetings with the history of how rules for the treatment of human subjects were formalized in the United States in the decades after World War II.

Drawing on extensive archival sources, Laura Stark reconstructs the daily lives of scientists, lawyers, administrators, and research subjects living and working on the campus of the National Institutes of Health, where they first wrote the rules for the treatment of human subjects. Stark argues that the model of group deliberation that gradually crystallized during this period reflected contemporary legal and medical conceptions of what it meant to be human, what political rights human subjects deserved, and which stakeholders were best suited to decide. She then explains how the historical contingencies that shaped rules for the treatment of human subjects in the postwar era guide decision making today-within hospitals, universities, health departments, and other institutions in the United States and across the globe. Book jacket.

Contents:

IRBs in action

Everyone's an expert? Warrants for expertise

Local precedents

Documents and deliberations: an anticipatory perspective

Setting IRBs in motion in Cold War America

An ethics of place

The many forms of consent

Deflecting responsibility

Conclusion: the making of ethical research.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [208]-222) and index.

ISBN:

9780226770864

0226770869

9780226770871

0226770877

OCLC:

769992324