药物临床试验中科学原则、法规原则与伦理原则的权重与取舍

药物临床试验既要符合伦理学原则、法规原则,又要具备科学原则.伦理学原则要求受试者最大程度受益和尽可能避免伤害.在法规原则上也首先强调的是受试者的权益,然而试验设计的科学性原则有很多时候却对伦理学提出了挑战.当药物临床试验的科学性、法规性与伦理性发生矛盾时,我们应把伦理问题摆在首位.     

儿童临床试验伦理要素与受试者保护机制研究

国家卫生健康委员会2016年5月、2017年5月公布71种药物纳入鼓励研发申报儿童药品清单,以儿童为受试者的临床试验迎来巨大的机会,给儿童受试者保护带来巨大的挑战。通过探讨儿童临床试验方案设计、儿童及家庭知情同意、儿童受试者风险-受益评估及伦理委员会审查程序等与儿童临床试验特殊伦理问题相关的伦理审查体系,以期构建以临床试验方案为依据,受试者安全为核心,知情同意为底线,兼顾公平原则,研究者-监护人-伦理委员会-行政管理部门-社会各方协同配合的儿童受试者保护机制。     

临床试验安全性均势伦理探讨

均势原则是临床试验中的一项方法规则,同时也是临床试验研究的伦理规则。均势原则指导下的临床试验仍然存在设计缺陷、忽视安全风险评估、均势判定主体失当等方面的安全性伦理问题。这需要进一步确立安全性均势伦理准则,以强调在临床均势试验研究中不能对受试者造成生命健康方面的明显伤害,包括风险受益全面合理性评估原则、受试者生命安全底线原则以及利益相关者安全责任原则。落实安全性均势伦理原则需要采取多学科协作评估、优化均势判定主体结构及明确判定标准等基本规范策略。     

药物临床试验初始伦理审查规范化程度研究

伦理审查是药物临床试验中保护受试者安全与权益、保证药物临床试验伦理合理性的重要措施之一。初始伦理审查是药物临床试验所有审查的重中之重。对73家医院药物临床试验的初始伦理审查管理制度及883个审查项目的执行情况进行调查。结果显示,初始伦理审查中存在着伦理成员构成不合理、伦理审查流程不完善、审查内容缺乏一致性等问题。结合实际工作情况和既有的研究成果,提出提高伦理审查能力、完善审查制度、完善伦理审查内容等措施。     

药物临床试验伦理审查的跟踪审查程序研究

为了保护受试者的合法权益,药物临床试验的伦理审查必须规范化进行.通过走访哈尔滨医科大学附属医院伦理委员会了解到,伦理审查程序缺乏相对完整性,特别是跟踪审查程序还在完善过程中,没有形成统一具体的操作规程.对此,结合我国实际情况,借鉴国外先进经验,提出构建药物临床试验跟踪审查程序的建议.     

守护受试者的权益——对“药物研究与应用的伦理监督”

如何保障和守护临床试验研究中受试者的权益?这既是医生、患者(受试者)、工业界与公众注目的问题,也是医院伦理委员会工作面临并要解决的基本而至关重要的问题。从华西医院伦理委员会工作角度出发,分析了临床试验研究中的权益冲突和对受试者权益的科学、伦理与政策守护的要素,论述了如何保障受试者权益问题。     

药物临床试验伦理审查的跟踪审查研究

伦理委员会对药物临床试验的跟踪审查是保障药物临床试验质量,保护受试者权益的核心手段。通过对伦理审查中跟踪审查的含义、类别、内容和形式的阐述,以及对跟踪审查意义的探讨和研究,结合我国近年来伦理委员会跟踪审查的难点进行分析。在建立伦理委员会的监管机制,完善跟踪审查操作规程,加强对伦理委员会委员及研究者的继续教育和培训,完善伦理审查信息管理几方面提出切实可行的建议。     

对药品临床试验的伦理性与科学性的思考

药物临床试验首先要符合伦理学原则,同时又必须具备科学性。伦理学原则要求受试者最大程度受益和尽可能避免伤害。随机、双盲对照的方法在保障科学性的同时,对伦理学提出了挑战。     

守护受试者的权益--对"药物研究与应用的伦理监督"

如何保障和守护临床试验研究中受试者的权益?这既是医生、患者(受试者)、工业界与公众注目的问题,也是医院伦理委员会工作面临并要解决的基本而至关重要的问题.从华西医院伦理委员会工作角度出发,分析了临床试验研究中的权益冲突和对受试者权益的科学、伦理与政策守护的要素,论述了如何保障受试者权益问题.     

新神经技术深部脑刺激的伦理挑战

新神经技术深部脑刺激具有靶点定位明确、副作用小和可调控的优点,是无法采用手术和药物治疗的运动和精神障碍性疾病的唯一疗法。鉴于深部脑刺激技术存在风险受益比难考量、自主性受限、分配与回报不公正、作用机制不明、公司推卸责任、媒体炒作和非医疗应用等问题,可采取慎重评估风险受益比、有效知情同意、降低技术风险、制定伦理规范和强化全面监管等措施加以解决。鉴于深部脑刺激技术潜在的伦理挑战,伦理委员会要负起临床治疗/研究的伦理审查和监管责任,严格对接政策法规,确保有效审查深部脑刺激技术项目的科学性和伦理性,切实保护患者/受试者的安全和权益。     

Planning Beyond the Next Trial in Adaptive Experiments: A Dynamic Programming Approach

Experimentation is at the heart of scientific inquiry. In the behavioral and neural sciences, where only a limited number of observations can often be made, it is ideal to design an experiment that leads to the rapid accumulation of information about the phenomenon under study. Adaptive experimentation has the potential to accelerate scientific progress by maximizing inferential gain in such research settings. To date, most adaptive experiments have relied on myopic, one‐step‐ahead strategies in which the stimulus on each trial is selected to maximize inference on the next trial only. A lingering question in the field has been how much additional benefit would be gained by optimizing beyond the next trial. A range of technical challenges has prevented this important question from being addressed adequately. This study applies dynamic programming (DP), a technique applicable for such full‐horizon, “global” optimization, to model‐based perceptual threshold estimation, a domain that has been a major beneficiary of adaptive methods. The results provide insight into conditions that will benefit from optimizing beyond the next trial. Implications for the use of adaptive methods in cognitive science are discussed.     

Clinical Equipoise and Adaptive Clinical Trials

Ethically permissible clinical trials must not expose subjects to risks that are unreasonable in relation to anticipated benefits. In the research ethics literature, this moral requirement is typically understood in one of two different ways: (1) as requiring the existence of a state of clinical equipoise, meaning a state of honest, professional disagreement among the community of experts about the preferred treatment; or (2) as requiring an equilibrium between individual and collective ethics. It has been maintained that this second interpretation makes it mandatory to minimize the number of patients receiving the treatment that will eventually be shown to be inferior by the trial. This requirement has led to the development of adaptive trials, i.e., trials in which treatment allocation is determined by data accumulated during interim analysis. Many statisticians argue that in some circumstances—typically with potentially high benefits, as in the much discussed ECMO trial—adaptive design is the only ethically permissible experimental design. Nevertheless, some proponents of clinical equipoise argue that adaptive trials are neither ethically required nor permissible. More specifically, they argue that clinical trials using adaptive designs fail to meet the moral requirement of clinical equipoise, since these trials presuppose an epistemic state that is incompatible with a physician’s duty of care to her subjects. This paper emphasizes that the debate is to a large extent resting on an epistemological confusion. Specifically, I argue that this response conflates two different conceptions of statistical evidence (i.e., frequentist and Bayesian), and that recognizing this distinction elucidates an epistemological framework in which adaptive trials are both consistent with and recommended by the moral requirement of clinical equipoise.

     

Statistical Power,the Belmont Report,and the Ethics of Clinical Trials

Achieving a good clinical trial design increases the likelihood that a trial will take place as planned, including that data will be obtained from a sufficient number of participants, and the total number of participants will be the minimal required to gain the knowledge sought. A good trial design also increases the likelihood that the knowledge sought by the experiment will be forthcoming. Achieving such a design is more than good sense—it is ethically required in experiments when participants are at risk of harm. This paper argues that doing a power analysis effectively contributes to ensuring that a trial design is good. The ethical importance of good trial design has long been recognized for trials in which there is risk of serious harm to participants. However, whether the quality of a trial design, when the risk to participants is only minimal, is an ethical issue is rarely discussed. This paper argues that even in cases when the risk is minimal, the quality of the trial design is an ethical issue, and that this is reflected in the emphasis the Belmont Report places on the importance of the benefit of knowledge gained by society. The paper also argues that good trial design is required for true informed consent.     

A randomized clinical trial of group and individual Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy approaches for Social Anxiety Disorder

To compare the effectiveness of two Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) interventions—an individual and a group intervention—in Social Anxiety Disorder therapy. We compared the two treatment groups against a waitlist condition in a randomized clinical trial with 86 young adults. The individual CBT intervention was Trial-Based Cognitive Therapy (TBCT) developed by De-Oliveira, a novel technique in which the therapist engages the patient in a simulated judicial trial with the goal of identifying and changing core dysfunctional beliefs. The group intervention consisted of exposition therapy based on the Hofmann and Otto protocol (Group CBT) to restructure negative and dysfunctional cognitions regarding social situations. Both interventions reduced psychiatric symptoms from pre- to post-test and primary social anxiety and depression symptoms relative to waitlist controls. The interventions were recently introduced in Brazil, and this is the first randomized control trial to compare TBCT and this Group CBT, which were effective in assessing changes in social anxiety symptoms as well as co-occurring psychiatric symptoms.     

Development of a school-based treatment program for middle school youth with ADHD

The authors conduct an evaluation of a middle school-based treatment program for youth with ADHD during early stages of treatment development. The studies focus on interpreting outcome trends in preliminary data and identifying assessment issues that will be important to consider when conducting a clinical trial. Parent reports indicate that the majority of students benefit from improvements in academic, social, and overall functioning. Although teachers report beneficial effects for the majority of the participants in the program, there is little agreement about individual students. Measurement problems are associated with understanding normal change during a school year, accounting for normal behavior changes in December and May, and considerable disagreement between teachers. Suggestions to guide future work in this area are provided.     

Has Emergency Medicine Research Benefited Patients? An Ethical Question

From an ethical standpoint, the goal of clinical research is to benefit patients. While individual investigations may not yield results that directly improve patients’ evaluation or treatment, the corpus of the research should lead in that direction. Without the goal of ultimate benefit to patients, such research fails as a moral enterprise. While this may seem obvious, the need to protect and benefit patients can get lost in the milieu of clinical research.Many advances in emergency medicine have been based upon the results of research studies conducted both within the specialty and by others outside of the field. But has this research benefited patients? Has it followed the Hippocratic commitment “to do good or at least do no harm”? The answer is: yes, and no. This paper attempts to demonstrate this: first by citing advances from applied research that have benefited emergency department patients over the past three decades, and follows with some aspects of emergency medicine research that makes one question both its safety and its efficacy. While enormous gains have been made in patient care as a result of emergency medical research, ethical considerations complicate this rosy picture, and point to future areas of concern for researchers.Some aspects of clinical research and research oversight fall short of meeting the ethical standards of safety and patient benefit. Research agendas are still driven largely by the availability of funds, both from private industry and from government agencies. Many vital patient groups are harmed by omitting or sorely under-representing them as research subjects, most notably those that are critically ill and injured. Finally, questions still arise about clinical researchers’ fiduciary responsibility to their subject-patients. Even more important than the institutional safeguards, such as the Institutional Review Boards, is the individual researcher’s moral compass, which must serve to protect the subject-patients of clinical research.Overall, emergency medicine research has been and continues to be a moral endeavor. Perhaps the greatest moral lapse has been the lack of attention to key populations within emergency medicine research, and the patients most needing acute intervention are the ones who suffer.     

Clinical Trials Infrastructure as a Quality Improvement Intervention in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Mounting evidence suggests that participation in clinical trials confers neither advantage nor disadvantage on those enrolled. Narrow focus on the question of a “trial effect,” however, distracts from a broader mechanism by which patients may benefit from ongoing clinical research. We hypothesize that the existence of clinical trials infrastructure—the organizational culture, systems, and expertise that develop as a product of sustained participation in cooperative clinical trials research—may function as a quality improvement lever, improving the quality of care and outcomes of all patients within an institution or region independent of their individual participation in trials. We further contend that this “infrastructure effect” can yield particular benefits for patients in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The hypothesis of an infrastructure effect as a quality improvement intervention, if correct, justifies enhanced research capacity in LMIC as a pillar of health system development.     

An Evidence-Based,Community-Engaged Approach to Develop an Interactive Deliberation Tool for Pediatric Neuromuscular Trials

Duchenne/Becker muscular dystrophy (DBMD) and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) are rare neuromuscular disorders that present challenges to therapeutic and clinical trial decision making. We developed an interactive, evidence-based online tool designed to encourage thoughtful deliberation of the pros and cons of trial participation and to inform meaningful discussions with healthcare providers. Prior research demonstrates the importance of tool availability at the time each family is considering trial participation, which may be prior to the informed consent process. The tool is intended to be easily modified to other pediatric disease communities. Tool development was informed by prior qualitative research, literature reviews, and stakeholder input. Specific items were derived based on an online exploratory questionnaire of parents whose children participated in a trial for DBMD or SMA to understand motivations for participation. Parent participants in the exploratory survey reported strong impact of altruistic and individual benefit motivations and placed much greater emphasis on anticipated trial benefits than on harms when making participation decisions. We used this data to develop the evidence-based deliberation tool using a community-engaged approach. We initially targeted the tool for DBMD while using SMA survey data to evaluate ease of transition to that population. We conducted two iterative sets of activities to inform development and refinement of the tool: (1) community engagement of key stakeholders and (2) user experience testing. These activities suggest that the tool may increase deliberation and the weighing of benefits and harms. Ongoing evaluation will determine the acceptability and efficacy of this online intervention.     

Assessing the Ethics of Medical Research in Emergency Settings: How Do International Regulations Work in Practice?

Different ethical principles conflict in research conducted in emergency research. Clinical care and its development should be based on research. Patients in critical clinical condition are in the greatest need of better medicines. The critical condition of the patient and the absence of a patient representative at the critical time period make it difficult and sometimes impossible to request an informed consent before the beginning of the trial. In an emergency, care decisions must be made in a short period of time, and the more time is wasted, the more the risk of death or severe tissue damage and incapacity increases. Consent requests take time, and so the time period before treatment might put the patient’s life in jeopardy. Not requesting consent before a trial is also contradictory. A person should not be forced to participate in a trial against his or her will. Due to the dark history of medical research previously, international declarations and conventions have set up ethical principles for medical research. They emphasize the autonomy of the research participant—or his or her legal representative—to give a free and informed consent prior to the initiation of research. In the case of a critical emergency, the unconscious state of the patient, the emotional stress of family members or the lack of time to start life-sustaining measures may often restrict the possibilities of communicating with the patient or his/her representative. Therefore, written informed consent is difficult to achieve, and its voluntariness in emergency situations is, at best, open to question. The mortality of patients is high without clinical interventions in emergency research. Random selection of patients is difficult and requires extra work from personnel in the emergency rooms. Recruitment, information and asking for consent may also take time, postpone the initiation of treatment and increase the risk of death and irreversible tissue and organ damage, and therefore be risky for the patient. It is therefore essential that the health care professionals recruiting suitable research participants are well motivated and well trained. Medical research in an emergency setting should always be regarded as an exceptional situation requiring special provisions. Only such research should be done as cannot be done in other conditions. An independent body must approve the research protocol and the ways in which the consent of the participant or proxy are to be sought. In addition, the trial must be expected to result in direct and significant benefit for the research participants. If research without prior consent is not approved, the development of emergency care is threatened. On the other hand, if prior consent is not required, a person could be recruited into a clinical trial against his or her will. Doing good and avoiding harm, and respecting the autonomy of the patient are in conflict in the context of emergency medical research. To develop better medicines for patients experiencing acute medical emergencies, research into such conditions should be allowed. Research participants should have the possibility to participate or refuse to participate in research that may benefit them and other patients. The risk of irreversible damage occurring as the consequence of time delays for seeking consent is unacceptable. A prior wish about participation in clinical trials should be respected, if known. The conditions under which medical research in emergencies can be considered acceptable can be determined and agreed upon nationally and internationally. An earlier version of this paper was presented at The 7th International Conference on Bioethics on “The Ethics of Research in Emergency Medicine”, held on June 2, 2006, Warsaw, Poland.     

Patient Expectations of Benefit from Phase I Clinical Trials: Linguistic Considerations in Diagnosing a Therapeutic Misconception

The ethical treatment of cancer patientsparticipating in clinical trials requiresthat patients are well-informed about thepotential benefits and risks associated withparticipation. When patients enrolled in phaseI clinical trials report that their chance ofbenefit is very high, this is often taken as evidence of a failure of the informed consent process. We argue, however, that some simple themes from the philosophy of language may make such a conclusion less certain. First, the patient may receive conflicting statements from multiple speakers about the expected outcome of the trial. Patients may be reporting the message they like best. Second, there is a potential problem of multivocality. Expressions of uncertainty of the frequency type(e.g., ``On average, 5 out of every 100 patientswill benefit') can be confused with expressionsof uncertainty of the belief type (e.g.,``The chance that I will benefit is about80%'). Patients may be informed using frequency-type statements and respond using belief-type statements. Third, each speech episode involving the investigator and the patient regarding outcomes may subservemultiple speech acts, some of which may beindirect. For example, a patient reporting ahigh expected benefit may be reporting a beliefabout the future, reassuring family members,and/or attempting to improve his or her outcome by apublic assertion of optimism. These sources oflinguistic confusion should be considered injudging whether the patient's reported expectation isgrounds for a bioethical concern that there hasbeen a failure in the informed consent process.