Doris Schopper, Raffaella Ravinetto, Lisa Schwartz, Eunice Kamaara, Sunita Sheel, Michael J. Segelid, Aasim Ahmad, Angus Dawson, Jerome Singh, Amar Jesani & Ross Upshur
Public Health Ethics 10 (1) (2017)
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Abstract |
The Médecins Sans Frontières ethics review board has been solicited in an unprecedented way to provide advice and review research protocols in an ‘emergency’ mode during the recent Ebola epidemic. Twenty-seven Ebola-related study protocols were reviewed between March 2014 and August 2015, ranging from epidemiological research, to behavioural research, infectivity studies and clinical trials with investigational products at early development stages. This article examines the MSF ERB’s experience addressing issues related to both the process of review and substantive ethical issues in this context. These topics include lack of policies regarding blood sample collection and use, and engaging communities regarding their storage and future use; exclusion of pregnant women from clinical and vaccine trials; and the difficulty of implementing timely and high-quality qualitative/anthropological research to consider potential upfront harms. Having noticed different standards across ethics committees, we propose that when multiple ethics reviews of clinical and vaccine trials are carried out during a public health emergency they should be accompanied by transparent communication between the ECs involved. The MSF ERB experience should trigger a broader discussion on the ‘optimal’ ethics review in an emergency outbreak and what enduring structural changes are needed to improve the ethics review process.
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DOI | 10.1093/phe/phw039 |
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Citations of this work BETA
Ethics Preparedness: Facilitating Ethics Review During Outbreaks - Recommendations From an Expert Panel.Abha Saxena, Peter Horby, John Amuasi, Nic Aagaard, Johannes Köhler, Ehsan Shamsi Gooshki, Emmanuelle Denis, Andreas A. Reis & Raffaella Ravinetto - 2019 - BMC Medical Ethics 20 (1):29.
Challenges to Biobanking in LMICs During COVID-19: Time to Reconceptualise Research Ethics Guidance for Pandemics and Public Health Emergencies?Shenuka Singh, Rosemary Jean Cadigan & Keymanthri Moodley - 2022 - Journal of Medical Ethics 48 (7):466-471.
Research and Global Health Emergencies: On the Essential Role of Best Practice.Nayha Sethi - 2018 - Public Health Ethics 11 (3):237-250.
Conditions of Global Health Crisis Decision-Making—An Ethical Analysis.Elizabeth Fenton & Kata Chillag - 2021 - Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 18 (3):395-402.
Familiar Ethical Issues Amplified: How Members of Research Ethics Committees Describe Ethical Distinctions Between Disaster and Non-Disaster Research.Catherine M. Tansey, James Anderson, Renaud F. Boulanger, Lisa Eckenwiler, John Pringle, Lisa Schwartz & Matthew Hunt - 2017 - BMC Medical Ethics 18 (1):44.
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