NPRM. Statute? What Statute?

The NPRM cites 42 U.S.C. 289 as its statutory authority, but it does not seem to care much about following the language of the statute.

On Signing the Markingson Petition

By April 1942, the Pentagon was 40 percent over budget, partly because it had been enlarged since first approved, but mostly because the original estimate of $35 million had never been realistic. Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell delayed telling Congress, but in June he finally sent Colonel Leslie Groves to appear before a House Apppropriations subcommittee.

SACHRP Still Lacks Social Scientists

OHRP has announced new members of the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP):

• Chair Designate: Jeffrey R. Botkin, M.D., M.P.H., Professor of Pediatrics and Medical Ethics, Associate Vice President for Research, University of Utah. Term: October 15, 2012 - October 15, 2016
• Thomas Eissenberg, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology and Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies; Director, Clinical Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory, Virginia Commonwealth University. Term: October 9, 2012 - October 9, 2016
• Owen Garrick, M.D., M.B.A., President and CEO, Bridge Clinical Research, Inc. Term: October 15, 2012 - October 15, 2016
• Pilar Ossorio, J.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Law and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Term: October 15, 2012 - October 15, 2016

Eissenberg's PhD is in Experimental Psychology, and his "primary area of research is the behavioral pharmacology of drugs of abuse, focusing primarily on nicotine/tobacco." Ossorio's PhD is in Microbiology and Immunology. So that's four new members with background in biomedical research of one kind or another, none whose primary interests are in non-medical research.

IRBs Impeded Harvard Dissertation on Addiction and Incarceration

Kimberly Sue, a medical anthropologist in Harvard's MD/PhD program, reports that IRB review can seem "a hassle, a nuisance or a stumbling block, as we seek to enact a more relevant and engaged era of anthropology."

[Kimberly Sue "Are IRBs a Stumbling Block for an Engaged Anthropology?" Somatosphere, 9 August 2012, http://somatosphere.net/2012/08/are-irbs-a-stumbling-block-for-an-engaged-anthropology.html . h/t Michelle Meyer]

Elliott Wants to Scrap IRBs

Carl Elliott, author of White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine, calls IRBs "incapable" and wants them replaced.

[Carl Elliott, Useless Pharmaceutical Studies, Real Harm, New York Times, 29 July 2011.]