Do patients have a duty to participate in clinical trials?

The Choice to Become a Research Subject: A First-Person Perspective

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Patients with serious illnesses are often invited to participate in clinical trials. After being diagnosed with advanced cancer, I became one of those patients. I had to choose between two options: a treatment regimen my doctors had recommended, or a trial evaluating different treatments for my disease. As someone who had taught and written about research ethics, and a long-time member of an Institutional Review Board, I was in some ways better prepared than many patients are to make this choice. And I knew about the important health benefits that come from research, as well as the arguments that patients have a duty to participate in research. Nevertheless, I decided not to enroll in the trial. Was this a defensible choice, or did I have a responsibility to contribute to a study that could help future patients in my situation?

Join us for Rebecca Dresser’s lecture on Wednesday, March 22, 2017 from noon till 1 pm in person or online.

Since 1983, Rebecca Dresser has taught medical and law students about issues in end-of-life care, biomedical research, genetics, assisted reproduction, and related topics. She has been a member of the Washington University in St. Louis faculty since 1998. Her newest book, Silent Partners: Human Subjects and Research Ethics, calls for including experienced study subjects in research ethics deliberations. She is also the author of When Science Offers Salvation: Patient Advocacy and Research Ethics and editor of Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer. From 2002-2009, she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and from 2011-2015, she was a member of the National Institutes of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Program in Medical Ethics, Humanities & Law at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine.

In person: This lecture will take place in C102 East Fee Hall on MSU’s East Lansing campus. Feel free to bring your lunch! Beverages and light snacks will be provided.

Online: Here are some instructions for your first time joining the webinar, or if you have attended or viewed them before, go to the meeting!

Can’t make it? All webinars are recorded! Visit our archive of recorded lectures. To receive reminders before each webinar, please subscribe to our mailing list.