Research With Vulnerable Participants: Defining Vulnerability Part 1

good afternoon i'm david wendler from the department of bioethics here at the nih clinical center and today i'm going to talk and hopefully we're going to have some time for discussion on the ethical issues that are raised in conducting research with what are called vulnerable subjects and i'll talk a minute on what

i mean by that just a couple of notes i work at the nih i work here in the clinical center but i am emphatically not a spokesperson for the nih what i say are going to be my own views they're based on my own thoughts and as you'll see in some cases my own research

i hope people here agree with me on some of this but if we're really lucky people will disagree on some she'll give us a chance to have a good discussion all right so research with vulnerable subjects everybody who's here everybody who's watching online knows the importance of conducting clinical research it's not the only way

but it's certainly one of the best and one of the primary ways for identifying new treatments new interventions new ways to keep people from getting sick cure people who are sick and treat people who are chronically ill in order to preserve clinical research continue to do it keep public trust in it protect subjects

it's important that we have sufficient protections in place for the people participate in research and the point of today's lecture is this is especially important with vulnerable subjects and this is a topic that's not new this is not a claim that's original to me regulations commentators and guidelines for at least the last 40 years or so

have been emphasizing the importance of protecting vulnerable subjects who participate in clinical research this is just one blurb one example of that from the u.s regulations which says that irb so review committees should be aware of the special problems of research involving vulnerable populations and then should try to develop ways additional protections additional