This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Woodward¹ cites 1 study to generalize a claim that institutional review boards (IRBs) are overtaxed with protocols and spend only a cursory amount of time reviewing studies. My personal experience with 3 review boards, including 4 years of recent experience as an IRB member, goes against this. Under our current IRB rules, each study is reviewed in depth by 2 people, sometimes 3. This takes from a few minutes to an hour. At the IRB meeting, discussions of a well-constructed study without consent issues require 5 to 10 minutes. Studies with poor consent design or problems relating to their underlying science have taken over 45 minutes to resolve, often with a requirement that the investigator reply to criticisms at a later meeting. Our level of review is careful, and our IRB chair has explicitly defined our duty to protect research subjects.

Is our IRB overtaxed? This . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

Challenges to Human Subject Protections in US Medical Research

JAMA. ;282():1947-1952.
FULL TEXT