bioethics: Research on U.S. Medical Students

[Sohini Sengupta <sengups@med.unc.edu>]

On July 22, Public Citizen called for a federal investigation of the 
Association of American Medical Colleges and all U.S. medical schools for 
conducting unethical research on graduating medical students.  The Graduation 
Questionnaire is administered under coercive conditions in many cases (e.g., 
cannot graduate unless you complete it, parents denied tickets to graduation 
ceremonies) and in many instances is not reviewed by an ethics committee.  
Students are not even informed that their responses might form a part of 
research articles, of which at least 21 have been published since 1978.

The full letter to the federal Office for Human Research Protection can be 
viewed at http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7268.

An LA Times story is available at 
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-research23jul23,1,441523.story.

Many of you are connected with medical schools.  We urge you to contact your 
Dean and/or ethics committee chair and insist that:

a. the ethics committee at your medical school review the research
b. coercive practices are stopped
c. students are told that they are the subjects of research.

Please cc any correspondence to Peter Lurie of Public Citizen at 
plurie@citizen.org.

******************************************************************
Sohini Sengupta, PhD, MPH
Research Assistant Professor
The University of North Carolina
Department of Social Medicine
Wing D Medical School, CB# 7164
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7164

Tel: (919) 843-6881
Fax: (919) 966-7499
Email: sengups@med.unc.edu

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