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