A blog from the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Tag: legislation (Page 1 of 5)

Pragmatic trials without informed consent?

Pär SegerdahlRandomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered to be the gold standard for determining a causal effect of medical interventions. To achieve this aim, possible confounding factors must be avoided. This implies excluding many patients from participating in the trial, for example, patients with concomitant conditions. A negative consequence of these exclusions, however, is limited generalizability. Studying the artificially uniform participant group, you will be able to determine a causal effect, but you will know much less about real-life treatment outcomes in the population where the intervention actually will be used.

Further artificiality is created by the written informed consent procedure, which excludes even further patients from participating in the trial. Moreover, because they know they participate in a clinical trial, participants may change their behavior.

All this points to the importance of so-called pragmatic randomized controlled trials. In such trials, the effectiveness of two approved and routinely prescribed medicines are compared in normal clinical practice. This avoids most of the artificiality of RCTs and significantly improves generalizability and practical clinical relevance. Randomization is still required for scientific purposes, however, and written informed consent is an ethical obligation.

The demand for written informed consent is an obstacle to pragmatic trials. By creating, once again, artificial selection of patients, results continue to be less generalizable, which detracts from the whole point of conducting pragmatic trials. In a recent paper in the BMJ, twelve authors, among them, Stefan Eriksson at CRB, therefore argue that “EU clinical trial regulations should be revised to allow the waiver or modification of informed consent in low risk pragmatic trials.”

Some would consider this suggestion to be controversial. We need to keep in mind, however, the extremely low risks of studies that compare standardly prescribed medicines in normal clinical practice. We need to balance that low risk against the enormous social value of generalizable findings in evidence-based medicine.

Pär Segerdahl

Dal-Ré, R. et al. Low risk pragmatic trials do not always require participants’ informed consent. BMJ 2019;364:l1092

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Larger and smaller sized ethics

Pär SegerdahlEthics can be about big, almost religious questions. Should scientists be allowed to harvest stem cells from human embryos and then destroy the embryos? Ethics can also be about narrower, almost professional issues. How should the development of embryonic stem cell lines be regulated? The latter question is similar to the question: How should the aircraft industry be regulated?

Larger and smaller ethics can have difficulties understanding each other, even though they often need to talk. For example, larger ethics can be suspicious of medical research and the pharmaceutical industry, and overlook how meticulously responsible they most often are. And how rigorously supervised they are, as the aircraft industry. Neither the drug nor the aircraft industry can be carefree about safety issues!

Smaller ethics can also be suspicious of larger ethics. Medical research and industry, with their professional attitudes, can experience larger ethical questions as being as vague and distant as nebulae. This fact, that larger and smaller ethics have difficulties even hearing each other, creates the need for a simpler, more sincerely questioning attitude, which never settles within any limits, whether they are narrower or wider. Remember that even larger perspectives often degenerate into regulations of how people should think. They shrink.

Medical research and industry need regulation, it is as important as the safety work in the aircraft industry. However, we need also to think big about human life and life in general. In order to keep ethics alive, a beginner’s attitude is needed, constantly renewed sincerity. Does it sound difficult? All we need to do is to ask the questions we really wonder about, instead of hiding them behind a confident facade.

Nothing could be easier. The question is if we dare. The sincerest questions open up the biggest perspectives.

Pär Segerdahl

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Global data sharing, national oversight bodies

Pär SegerdahlScience has an international character and global research collaboration is common. For medical research, this means that health data and biological samples linked to people in one nation often are transferred to researchers in other nations.

At the same time, the development of new information and communication technology increases the importance of people’s data protection rights. To provide satisfying data protection in the new internet world, data protection regulations are tightening, especially within the EU.

In an article in Health and Technology, lawyer Jane Reichel discusses challenges that this development poses for biomedical research.

I am not a lawyer, but if I understand Reichel right, legislation can accompany personal data across national borders. For example, the EU requires that the foreign receiver of European data subjects’ personal data will handle the data in accordance with EU legislation – even if the receiver is a research group in the United States or Japan.

The fact that one nation may need to follow a foreign nation’s legislation not only challenges concepts of sovereignty and territoriality. It also challenges the responsibility of research ethics committees. These committees operate administratively at national level. Now it seems they might also need to monitor foreign rights and global standards. Do these national bodies have the expertise and authority for such an international task?

Read the article about these exciting and unexpected legal issues!

Pär Segerdahl

Reichel, J. Health Technol. (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-017-0182-6

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Ethics, human rights and responsible innovation

josepine-fernow2It is difficult to predict the consequences of developing and using new technologies. We interact with smart devices and intelligent software on an almost daily basis. Some of us use prosthetics and implants to go about our business and most of us will likely live to see self-driving cars. In the meantime, Swedish research shows that petting robot cats looks promising in the care of patients with dementia. Genetic tests are cheaper than ever, and available to both patients and consumers. If you spit in a tube and mail it to a US company, they will tell you where your ancestors are from. Who knows? You could be part sub Saharan African, and part Scandinavian at the same time, and (likely) still be you.

Technologies, new and old, have both ethical and human rights impact. Today, we are closer to scenarios we only pictured in science fiction a few decades ago. Technology develops fast and it is difficult to predict what is on the horizon. The legislation, regulation and ethical guidance we have today was developed for a different future. Policy makers struggle to assess the ethical, legal and human rights impact of new and emerging technologies. These frameworks are challenged when a country like Saudi Arabia, criticized for not giving equal rights to women, offers a robot honorary citizenship. This autumn marks the start of a research initiative that will look at some of these questions. A group of researchers from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas join forces to help improve the ethical and legal frameworks we have today.

The SIENNA project (short for Stakeholder-informed ethics for new technologies with high socio-economic and human rights impact) will deliver proposals for professional ethics codes, guidelines for research ethics committees and better regulation in three areas: human genetics and genomics, human enhancement, and artificial intelligence & robotics. The proposals will build on input from stakeholders, experts and citizens. SIENNA will also look at some of the more philosophical questions these technologies raise: Where do we draw the line between health and illness, normality and abnormality? Can we expect intelligent software to be moral? Do we accept giving up some of our privacy to screen our genome for genetic disorders? And if giving up some of our personal liberty is the price we have to pay to interact with machines, are we willing to pay it?

 The project is co-ordinated by the University of Twente. Uppsala University’s Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics contributes expertise on the ethical, legal and social issues of genetics and genomics, and experience of communicating European research. Visit the SIENNA website at www.sienna-project.eu to find out more about the project and our partners!

Josepine Fernow

The SIENNA projectStakeholder-informed ethics for new technologies with high socio-economic and human rights impact – has received just under € 4 million for a 3,5 year project under the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement No 741716.

Disclaimer: This text and its contents reflects only SIENNA’s view. The Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

SIENNA project

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Moral panic in the intellect

Pär SegerdahlMoral panic develops intellectually. It is our thoughts that are racing. Certain mental images make such a deep impression on us that we take them for Reality, for Truth, for Facts. Do not believe that the intellect is cold and objective. It can boil over with agitated thoughts.

This is evident in bioethics, where many issues are filled with anguish. Research information about cloned animals, about new techniques for editing in the genome, or about embryonic stem cell research, evoke scary images of subversive forms of research, threatening human morality. The panic requires a sensitive intellect. There, the images of the research acquire such dimensions that they no longer fit into ordinary life. The images take over the intellect as the metaphysical horizon of Truth. Commonplace remarks that could calm down the agitated intellect appear to the intellect as naive.

A science news in National Geographic occasions these musings. It is about the first attempt in the United States to edit human embryos genetically. Using so-called CRISPR-Cas9 technique, the researchers removed a mutation associated with a common inherited heart disease. After the successful editing, the embryos were destroyed. (You find the scientific article reporting the research in Nature.)

Reading such research information, you might feel anxiety; anxiety that soon takes possession of your intellect: What will they do next? Develop “better” humans who look down on us as a lower species? Can we permit science to change human nature? NO, we must immediately introduce new legislation that bans all genetic editing of human embryos!

If the intellect can boil over with such agitated thoughts, and if moral panic legislation is imprudent, then I believe that bioethics needs to develop its therapeutic skills. Some bioethical issues need to be treated as affections of the intellect. Bioethical anxiety often arises, I believe, when research communication presents science as the metaphysical horizon of truth, instead of giving science an ordinary human horizon.

It may seem as if I took a stand for science by representing critics as blinded by moral panic. That is not the case, for the other side of moral panic is megalomania. Hyped notions of great breakthroughs and miraculous cures can drive entire research fields. Mental images that worry most people stimulate other personalities. Perhaps Paolo Macchiarini was such a personality, and perhaps he was promoted by a scientific culture of insane mental expectations on research and its heroes.

We need a therapeutic bioethics that can calm down the easily agitated intellect.

Pär Segerdahl

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More biobank ethics and law

Biobank and registry research comes with particular sets of legal and ethical issues. We explore some of them in our Biobank Perspectives newsletter.

In this issue, you can read about some of the challenges that arise when biobanking stem cells in relation to a new project on the legal and ethical aspects of using stem cells to treat type 1 diabetes. We also offer a progress update from the B3Africa project and present the new Swedish legal officer BBMRI-ERIC ELSI helpdesk.  You can also read about the Swedish Government Inquiry  that was presented recently, proposing a new legal framework for handling and investigating research misconduct, with a new act suggested to enter into force on 1st of January 2019.

Josepine Fernow & Anna-Sara Lind

We recommend readings - the Ethics Blog

Stem cells: unique biobank material?

Pär SegerdahlStem cells are perhaps not what first springs to mind as biobank material. Yet, even stem cells can be biobank material and there are biobanks that focus on stem cells. The use of this biobank material, however, has some unique features.

Stem cell researchers process not only data from human material. The material itself is “processed” and sometimes transplanted to research participants. Commercializing stem cell research moreover implies that cells derived from donated human tissue appear in products on a market. This gives rise to ethical and legal questions.

Does the law allow patenting cell lines derived from human donated material? Is buying and selling such material lawful? Another issue concerns research participants’ right to withdraw their consent at any time. Human embryonic stem cell research uses stem cells from donated spare embryos from IVF treatment. How far does embryo donors’ right to withdraw consent stretch? Must transplanted devices with matured cells be removed from research participants, if the embryo donor withdraws consent? Moreover, assuming that researchers share stem cell lines with companies, are these companies willing to invest in the development of stem cell products if embryo donors may withdraw their consent at any time?

Another difficulty is the purpose to which embryo donors are asked to consent. According to the law, human embryos can be donated only for research purposes (or to other IVF patients). Yet, medical research loses its meaning if results cannot be commercialized. It cannot then reach patients. It is important to inform donors about this broader context of embryo donation. Does that information imply that the consent becomes broader than has support in the law? Or is there support since embryos are not used in product development, only derived material?

The answers to these questions probably depend on whether one can distinguish between donated embryos and cell material derived from embryos (using various inventions). This raises also more philosophical questions about how to view embryos, stem cell lines, matured cells, and human tissue.

Pär Segerdahl

An earlier version of this text was published in Biobank perspectives.

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The pharmaceutical industry and altruism

Pär SegerdahlI am currently thinking about a common gut reaction to the pharmaceutical industry. I sometimes have this reaction too, so this is an examination of my own reaction.

The reaction is a feeling of discomfort, when a central actor in the management of something as important as human health and disease is a multibillion-dollar industry with profit as overall goal.

Is it really possible to combine such a businesslike aim with a genuine desire to cure the sick?

Let us compare with another industry that radiates more compassionate desire to cure, namely, alternative medicine. Here too products are sold to people with various ailments. There is clearly a market and a business mindset. Yet the actors on this market radiate more love of mankind. It can sometimes even appear as if the products were manufactured and sold out of pure goodness!

What makes these business practices seem imbued with good will to cure? I suggest that it depends on the strong belief in the healing effects of the products. I do not deny that many of the products have beneficial effects. My point is only that beliefs about good effects are at the forefront and can make the provision of the products appear like an ethical act of noble actors.

The pharmaceutical industry is different from alternative medicine partly through being prohibited from being permeated with beliefs about the healing effects of the products. It is actually illegal for the pharmaceutical industry to act as nobly and compassionately as the actors within alternative medicine. It could invite quackery.

The pharmaceutical industry operates on a highly regulated market. There is specific legislation for pharmaceutical products and special authorities supervising the industry. Satisfying the quality and safety demands often requires decades of research and development. This means huge investment costs, which presupposes profits.

This is how we have solved the problem of providing safe and effective treatments through the health care system. By having a pharmaceutical industry that is not permeated with good faith and good intentions, but instead is highly regulated and supervised. The products must satisfy the quality requirements, period. Beliefs and good intentions are irrelevant.

Research, industry and healthcare together constitute a regulated system for managing health and disease. Within this system, researchers can be driven by curiosity, and industry by profit, while doctors want to cure their patients, and research participants want to support research that could lead to more effective treatments.

The point I am trying to make is that the gut reaction probably overlooks just this division of motives: In order for a whole system to work for the good, not every actor in the system needs to place good intentions first. It can rather pose a risk for the entire system.

There is no reason to glorify the pharmaceutical industry. Rather there are reasons to question it, for example, the marketing of products, which sometimes tries to create the faith that is prohibited in the development and approval of the products.

The industry is not altruistic. It is driven by profit. But through its place within the system it can make altruism and good will possible.

Pär Segerdahl

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Ethics and law of stem cell treatment of diabetes

Pär SegerdahlMany people support in various ways medical research, which they perceive as urgent in view of the needs of various patient groups. But patients typically won’t benefit from research unless the results are translated into development of medical products.

Type 1 diabetes is an incurable disease that requires daily life-sustaining treatment and strict dietary rules. Disease onset usually occurs at an early age.

In Sweden, about 50 000 people have this form of diabetes and of these around 8 000 are children. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells. Without insulin the body cells cannot use glucose for energy, and the sugar level in the blood rises. Energy is recovered instead from fat and protein, which causes waste products that can cause diabetic coma and attacks on vital organs.

Today, diabetes is treated with daily insulin injections, or by using an insulin pump. This requires continuous measurement of blood sugar levels, as incorrect doses of insulin entails risks and can be life-threatening. It is not easy to live with diabetes.

An alternative treatment, which is still at the research stage, is to generate new insulin-producing cells using human embryonic stem cells. The insulin-producing cells detect blood sugar levels and regulate the secretion of insulin. In order not to be attacked by the immune system, the transplanted cells are encapsulated in a protective material. It may become easier to live with diabetes.

But research alone doesn’t treat diabetes. Encapsulated insulin-producing cells need to be produced and made available also to patients; not only to research participants. But this is a big step and a host of ethical and legal issues, including embryo donation, patentability and consent, need to be examined and discussed.

The Swedish Research Council recently granted funding for a project to examine these issues. The project is led by Mats G. Hansson at CRB and is a collaboration with Olle Korsgren, professor of transplantation immunology, as well as with lawyers Anna-Sara Lind and Bengt Domeij, and philosophers and ethicists Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist and Pär Segerdahl.

The step from stem cell research to available treatments requires reflection. I look forward to start thinking about the ethical and philosophical questions.

Pär Segerdahl

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Approaching future issues - the Ethics Blog

Research data, health cyberspace and direct-to-consumer genetic testing

josepine-fernow2We live in a global society, which means there are several actors that regulate both research and services directed at consumers. It is time again for our newsletter on current issues in biobank ethics and law. This time, Biobank Perspectives  lets you read about the legal aspects of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Santa Slokenberga writes about her doctoral dissertation in law from Uppsala University and how the Council of Europe and the EU interact with each other and the legal systems in the member states. She believes direct-to-consumer genetic testing can be seen as a “test” of the European legal orders, showing us that there is need for formal cooperation and convergence as seemingly small matters can lead to large consequences.

We also follow up from a previous report on the General Data Protection Regulation in a Swedish perspective with more information about the Swedish Research Data Inquiry. We are also happy to announce that a group of researchers from the University of Oxford, University of Iceland, University of Oslo and the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics at Uppsala University received a Nordforsk grant to find solutions for governance of the “health cyberspace” that is emerging from assembling and using existing data for new purposes. To read more, download a pdf of the latest issue (4:2016), or visit the Biobank Perspectives site for more ethical and legal perspectives on biobank and registry research.

Josepine Fernow

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