Newsroom

New research assesses compliance with ethical guidelines for clinical trials


May 11, 2011

A new study led by Dr. Monica Taljaard suggests that researchers around the world are getting better at following certain ethical guidelines for clinical trials, but more work still needs to be done. Dr. Taljaard and her colleagues found that ethically-challenging “cluster-randomized” trials published between 2000 and 2008 reported a formal Research Ethics Board review only 73% of the time and informed consent only 64% of the time, however, there was a steady increase in the use of these practices over time. Dr. Taljaard and her team are now working to develop international guidelines to further improve the ethical conduct and review of these trials. See British Medical Journal for details.