Beyond Criticism of Ethics Review Boards: Strategies for Engaging Research Communities and Enhancing Ethical Review Processes

Continuing review of research approved by Canadian research ethics boards.

Institutional Review Boards and Independent Ethics Committees

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and Independent Ethics Committees (IECs) are charged with protecting the rights and safety of clinical trial participants. The regulations that guide the review, approval, and conduct of human research refer to these independent boards as IRBs or IECs. In 2001 the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP) was formed. Sinc...

Guidance and Ethical Considerations for Undertaking Transgender Health Research and Institutional Review Boards Adjudicating this Research

The purpose of this review is to create a set of provisional criteria for Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to refer to when assessing the ethical orientation of transgender health research proposals. We began by searching for literature on this topic using databases and the reference lists of key articles, resulting in a preliminary set of criteria. We then collaborated to develop the followi...

Scale-up Strategies for Membrane-Based Desalination Processes: A Review

Membrane-based technologies have increasingly been chosen in desalination processes, which is evidenced by the increase of large-scale plants constructed in recent years. Indeed, several appropriate strategies should be considered to minimize problems faced during the construction, such as membrane system designs, area requirement, energy requirement, operation and maintenance, and environmenta...

E-recruitment based clinical research: notes for Research Ethics Committees/Institutional Review Boards.

Patient recruitment is a critical point of today's clinical research. Several proposals have been made for improving it, but the effectiveness of these measures is actually uncertain. The use of Internet (e-recruitment) could represent a great chance to improve patient enrolment, even though the effectiveness of this implementation is not so evident. E-recruitment could bring some advantages, s...