Many health professionals and leaders in the black community cite the Tuskegee Experiment as a factor contributing to low participation of African Americans in routine preventive care, clinical trials and organ donation. However, we can be thankful that the Tuskegee Experiment did lead to a change for the better in how medical research is done.
How Can You Be Sure that a Clinical Trial Is Safe?
• An Institutional Review Board (IRB) must approve all studies involving human or animal subjects in advance. Complaints should be addressed to the director of the study or the institution’s IRB.
• IRBs are made up of physicians, ethicists, religious leaders and other community leaders, and are required to look at studies that are going to use human or animal subjects.
An IRB’s main responsibility is to protect the public from harm and look carefully at each study’s methods to make sure the research is performed in an ethical way.