Blog Share: Post from the Research Ethics Blog

On her blog yesterday, Nancy Walton discusses a research disaster that occurred over nine years ago and is just now coming to light. It concerned a cardiac surgery trial conducted at Columbia University that may have resulted in the deaths of at least two subjects and caused severe adverse reactions in many others. In her blog, Walton wonders why the only media outlet that she found to have covered the story is the Huffington Post. Why hasn’t the mainstream media picked up on it, she asks?

    “This seems, at first glance, to be an extremely serious potential breach of research ethics. It also is a pretty monumental medical story — a clinical trial resulting in deaths and serious morbidity. Yet I haven’t been able to find any sources, other than HuffPo, that have corroborated this story. The blogs and newsgroups I note above each cite the HuffPo story only. The story has not been picked up by mainstream media. Documents supporting the story, such as the letter to Columbia from OHRP, are not publicly available.”

Read the entire post here.