Anthropologist: IRBs Create "the Worst of Possible Worlds"

Jonathan Stillo, a PhD candidate in medical anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center, writes with great sensitivity of the ethical challenges he faced while studying mortally ill patients at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Romania. He suggests that IRB review was at best an irrelevance and at worst a hindrance to his efforts at ethical research.

[Jonathan Stillo, "The Trobriand Islanders Never Friended Malinowski on Facebook," 30 November 2011, CAC.OPHONY, and "Research Ethics in Impossibly Unethical Situations," CAC.OPHONY, 21 December 2011. Another hat tip to the indefatigable Roberto Veloso. I realize the IRB angle on this may be the least interesting part of Stillo's story, but this is the blog I have.]