Experimentation with Human Beings: Light or Only Shadows?

We have failed Jay Katz. Like the man looking under the lamp-post for his keys-not because that was where he was standing when he dropped them but because the light is better there-we have labored too long in the light and poked too infrequently into the shadows where the often painful truth is to be found. We have treated as exact the imprecise process of balancing research risks and benefits. We have exalted autonomy and made a sacrament of consent forms, even those that run to hellish lengths, littered with jargon - and forgotten the myriad constraints on subjects\u27 choices. We have realized that, however well-intentioned researchers may be, their individual judgment of when and how to conduct research is usually very partial, in both senses of that word. Yet, from that realization we have moved to the contradictory conclusion that by instituting prior review by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), we have solved the ethical problems involved in deciding when and how to conduct research. Above all, we have developed elaborate rules and processes to normalize human experimentation, to treat it as an ordinary activity. We have thus avoided looking clearly at the moral dilemma that lies at the heart of every research encounter: We are asking you to do this not for yourself but for others, even though we know that the role of human subject entails real and sometimes unforeseen risks including death. Such a statement is significant not becauseor not solely because-it clearly describes the potential harm. I agree with Jay that this is not the critical issue, though it is hardly one that we can ignore, in light both of the historical abuses of research subjects and also of what has occurred much more recently at such renowned medical institutions as the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins. Rather, its central significance lies in its frank description of the aims of research and, hence, of the potential divergence of interest between the prospective subject and the person offering to enroll him or her in the research project

Designing an Equitable Strategy for Allocating Antiretroviral Treatments

A study by Wilson and Blower in the February issue of PLoS Medicine addressed the issue of ensuring equity in distributing AIDS medications. Reis and Capron discuss the study's implication

Correction to:Expanding controlled donation after the circulatory determination of death: statement from an international collaborative (Intensive Care Medicine, (2021), 47, 3, (265-281), 10.1007/s00134-020-06341-7)

The article “Expanding controlled donation after the circulatory determination of death: statement from an international collaborative”, written by Domínguez-Gil, B., Ascher, N., Capron, A.M. et al. was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 21 February 2021 without open access. With the author(s)’ decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 25 March 2021 to © The Author(s) 2021 and the article is forthwith distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. The original article has been corrected

Thirty Years After Michael E. Porter: What Do We Know About Business Exit?

Although a business exit is an important corporate change initiative, the buyer’s side seems to be more appealing to management researchers than the seller’s because acquisitions imply growth, i.e., success. Yet from an optimistic viewpoint, business exit can effectively create value for the selling company. In this paper we attempt to bring the relevance of the seller’s side back into our consciousness by asking: What do we know about business exit? We start our exploration with Porter (1976), focusing on literature that investigates the antecedents of, barriers to, and outcomes of business exit. We also include studies from related fields such as finance and economics.1 Through this research we determine three clusters of findings: factors promoting business exit, exit barriers, and exit outcomes. Overall, it is the intention of this paper to highlight the importance of business exit for research and practice. Knowing what we know about business exits and their high financial value we should bear in mind that exit need not mean failure but a new beginning for a corporation