A recent episode revives a long-standing debate over the ethics of research involving placebos. As reported in the Washington Post and discussed at length in an article published in Science, a multicenter clinical study supported by the National Institutes of Health and conducted at major medical centers in the United States involved children with asthma Read more
Bioethics
Experts in infectious disease and public health warn that the COVID-19 pandemic will be with us for a long time unless a vaccine becomes available soon, which is not likely. Estimates of how long it will take for an effective vaccine to come to market range from 12 to 18 months or longer. This situation Read more
In 1902, a smallpox outbreak infected thousands of people across the northeastern United States. That year, in Massachusetts alone, 2,314 people were infected, and 284 died. This was not unusual for early-twentieth-century Massachusetts: The smallpox vaccine had been invented more than a century earlier and had markedly reduced the incidence of the disease, but the Read more
An episode pitting top administrators at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) against senior scientists at the organization serves as a vital reminder of the importance of academic freedom and the need to communicate and express concerns about scientific research. NIH administrators prohibited two of its senior scientists from speaking out about a research study Read more
Late last year the New York Times reported that Dr. José Baselga, the chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, had resigned for failing to disclose his conflicts of interest at professional meetings and in scientific and medical journals. The Times report says that Dr. Baselga—who also served as physician-in-chief at the center—“had Read more
Each year, the Einstein-Cardozo Bioethics Education Programs hold the Trachtenberg Essay Contest, in which we invite undergraduates from around the nation to submit brief essays on selected topics in bioethics. It’s a unique and important opportunity for us to find out what those interested in the field are thinking about and to highlight the best Read more
