Voluntary Standards Proposed for Human Research

WASHINGTON - The Office of Human Research Protections announced that policies on human research would be revised to increase the protection of subjects. Changes include universities verifying that scientists dealing with human subjects have formal training in ethics and that university review boards must show that they have sufficient staff members and expertise to conduct proper ethical reviews of proposed experiments. In addition, the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences will be asked to devise a way to measure the performance of scientists and boards. For more information visit www.ohrp.osophs.dhhs.gov.