E-drug: Public Citizen comments on NBAC report
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December 6, 2000
Recently, we wrote to you bringing to your attention the fact that
the U.S. National Bioethics Advisory Commission had, at the last
minute, slipped a proposal into its draft report on international
research ethics that would permit certain U.S.-funded research to not
be reviewed by U.S. Institutional Review Boards. Along with leading
bioethicists and developing country researchers (George Annas, Art
Caplan, Dirceu Greco, Michael Grodin, Troy Brennan), we have today
written to the NBAC, criticizing this proposal. Included in our
letter are quantitative and qualitative data from research
commissioned by the NBAC itself, but which have largely been excluded
from the main volume of the report. The data appear instead in a
second volume that has not been made widely available for public
review. Our comments can be viewed at
http://www.citizen.org/hrg/PUBLICATIONS/1550.htm.
They are also reproduced at the end of this letter. [They were too
long to include in this message. BS]
Please take the time to write to the NBAC expressing your opposition
to this last-minute change and cc a copy to us. At least seven
developing country researchers have already done so. We can then
incorporate your comments into our testimony at the next NBAC meeting
(December 7 and 8 in Washington, D.C). It is especially important to
have statements from developing country researchers and those sitting
on IRBs in industrialized countries. The contacts for mailing
comments are:
Email: nbac@od.nih.gov
NBAC Website: Comments
Mail: 6705 Rockledge Drive, Suite 700, Bethesda, MD 20892-7979
Fax: (301) 480-6900
Peter Lurie, MD, MPH
Peter Lurie, MD, MPH
Deputy Director
Public Citizen's Health Research Group
1600 20th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202)588-7781
Fax: (202)588-7796
Email: plurie@citizen.org
Web address: http://www.citizen.org
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