Most of the meeting is spent reviewing research proposals. They also review ongoing protocols, another 40 or 50 each month. We don't get in the IRB a whole lot of protocols that we think are ethically questionable. I think most of those are weeded out early by the investigators. The things that come up that might be termed ethical issues are things like use of placebos, compensation of subjects for participation, we have a lot of ethical concerns when there are children involved in the research, we have a lot of ethical concerns when it seems like researchers are excluding children from research.
Conflict of interest is another problem.
It concerns Dr. Judith Kissell, who studies and teaches medical ethics as part of Creighton's Center for Health Policy and Ethics. His liver disease was being successfully treated with medication. A University of Pennsylvania doctor talked him into stopping standard treatment, and being part of a gene therapy study. Gelsinger died, and the research was halted. The researcher was a stockholder in the company financing the study.