Robert Klitzman on what surprised him while researching the IRB

Robert Klitzman, author of The Ethics Police?, discusses two surprises that he came upon during his research. He lays out the different views of the IRB and issues of how power works. http://global.oup.com/academic/produc...

The horrors of Nazi concentration camp experiments and the egregious Tuskegee syphilis study led the US government, in 1974, to establish Research Ethics Committees, known as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to oversee research on humans. The US now has over 4,000 IRBs, which examine yearly tens of billions of dollars of research -- all studies on people involving diseases, from cancer to autism, and behavior. Yet ethical violations persist.

Robert Klitzman interviewed 45 IRB leaders and members about how they make decisions. This book reveals what Klitzman learned, providing rare glimpses into the conflicts and complexities these individuals face, defining science, assessing possible future risks and benefits of studies, and deciding how much to trust researchers -- illuminating, more broadly, how we view and interpret ethics in our lives today, and perceive and use power.

Robert Klitzman, MD, is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Joseph Mailman School of Public Health, and the Director of the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia University.