McCormick Jennifer B, Boyce Angie M, Cho Mildred K
Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA.
PLoS One. 2009;4(3):e4659. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004659. Epub 2009 Mar 2.
Research ethics consultation programs are being established with a goal of addressing the ethical, societal, and policy considerations associated with biomedical research. A number of these programs are modelled after clinical ethics consultation services that began to be institutionalized in the 1980s. Our objective was to determine biomedical science researchers' perceived need for and utility of research ethics consultation, through examination of their perceptions of whether they and their institutions faced ethical, social or policy issues (outside those mandated by regulation) and examination of willingness to seek advice in addressing these issues. We conducted telephone interviews and focus groups in 2006 with researchers from Stanford University and a mailed survey in December 2006 to 7 research universities in the U.S.
A total of 16 researchers were interviewed (75% response rate), 29 participated in focus groups, and 856 responded to the survey (50% response rate). Approximately half of researchers surveyed (51%) reported that they would find a research ethics consultation service at their institution moderately, very or extremely useful, while over a third (36%) reported that such a service would be useful to them personally. Respondents conducting human subjects research were more likely to find such a service very to extremely useful to them personally than respondents not conducting human subjects research (20% vs 10%; chi(2) p<0.001).
Our findings indicate that biomedical researchers do encounter and anticipate encountering ethical and societal questions and concerns and a substantial proportion, especially clinical researchers, would likely use a consultation service if they were aware of it. These findings provide data to inform the development of such consultation programs in general.
研究伦理咨询项目正在建立，其目标是解决与生物医学研究相关的伦理、社会和政策方面的考量。其中许多项目是以20世纪80年代开始制度化的临床伦理咨询服务为蓝本。我们的目标是，通过考察生物医学科研人员对他们自身及其机构是否面临（法规要求之外的）伦理、社会或政策问题的认知，以及考察他们在处理这些问题时寻求建议的意愿，来确定他们对研究伦理咨询的感知需求和效用。2006年我们对斯坦福大学的研究人员进行了电话访谈和焦点小组讨论，并于2006年12月对美国7所研究型大学进行了邮寄调查。
共访谈了16名研究人员（回复率75%），29人参加了焦点小组讨论，856人回复了调查（回复率50%）。约一半（51%）接受调查的研究人员报告称，他们会觉得所在机构的研究伦理咨询服务有一定、非常或极其有用，而超过三分之一（36%）的人报告称，这样的服务对他们个人会有用。与未进行人体受试者研究的受访者相比，进行人体受试者研究的受访者更有可能觉得这样的服务对他们个人非常有用（20%对10%；卡方检验p<0.001）。
我们的研究结果表明，生物医学研究人员确实遇到并预计会遇到伦理和社会问题及担忧，而且很大一部分人，尤其是临床研究人员，如果知道有咨询服务的话，可能会加以利用。这些研究结果为总体上为这类咨询项目的开展提供了参考数据。
