How
Tuskegee Changed Research Practices
After the Tuskegee Study, the government
changed its research practices to prevent a
repeat of the mistakes made in Tuskegee.
In 1974, the National Research Act was
signed into law, creating the
National
Commission for the Protection of Human
Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral
Research. The group identified basic
principles of research conduct and suggested
ways to ensure those principles were
followed.
In addition to the panel's
recommendations, regulations were passed in
1974 that required researchers to get
voluntary informed consent from all persons
taking part in studies done or funded by the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
(DHEW). They also required that all DHEW-supported
studies using human subjects be reviewed by
Institutional Review Boards, which read
study protocols and decide whether they meet
ethical standards.
The rules and policies for human subjects
research have been reviewed and revised many
times since they were first approved. From
1980-1983, the
President's Commission for
the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine
and Biomedical and Behavioral Research
looked at federal rules for doing research
on human subjects to see how well those
rules were being followed. An Ethics
Advisory Board was formed in the late 1970s
to review ethical issues of biomedical
research. In 1991, federal departments and
agencies (16 total) adopted the Federal
Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects.
Efforts to promote the highest ethical
standards in research are still going on
today. In October 1995, President Bill
Clinton created a
National Bioethics
Advisory Commission, funded and led by the
Department of Health and Human Services. The
commission's task was to review current
regulations, policies, and procedures to
ensure all possible safeguards are in place
to protect research volunteers. It was
succeeded by the
President's Council on Bioethics, which
was established in 2001. |