This national survey aimed to identify how biomedical researchers using vertebrate animals viewed issues of significance for translational science, including oversight and public engagement, and to analyze how researcher characteristics and animal model choice correlate with those views. Responses from 1,187 researchers showed awareness of, and concerns about, problems of translation, reproducibility and rigor. Surveyed … Read more

The advent of human gene editing has stimulated international interest in how best to govern this research. However, research on stakeholder views has neglected scientists themselves. We surveyed 212 scientists who use gene editing in their work. Questions captured views on oversight and use of somatic and germline human gene editing for treatment, prevention, and … Read more

Background: In 2015, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established a policy on sex as a biological variable (SABV) in an effort to address the overrepresentation of men and male animals in biomedical research and the lack of attention to sex-based responses to medical treatments. However, questions remain regarding how U.S. biomedical researchers perceive the … Read more

For years, genomic medicine—medicine based on the growing understanding of the genetic contribution to many diseases and conditions—has been hailed as the future of medical treatment, but it has thus far had limited effect on day-to-day medical practice. The ultimate goal of genomic medicine has always been the ability not just to identify dangerous gene … Read more

As panel testing and exome sequencing are increasingly incorporated into clinical care, clinicians must grapple with how to communicate the risks and treatment decisions surrounding breast cancer genes beyond BRCA1 and BRCA2. In this paper, we examine clinicians’ practice of employing BRCA1 and BRCA2 to help contextualize less certain genetic information regarding cancer risk and … Read more

Background: Since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act of 1993, focus on the equitable inclusion of women in clinical research has been ongoing. NIH’s 2015 sex as a biological variable (SABV) policy aims to transform research design, analysis, and reporting in the preclinical sphere by including male and female organisms in vertebrate animal … Read more

Introduction: The ethical skills fundamental to medical practice encompass a large portion of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) professionalism milestones. Yet many ethical practices are difficult to reduce to milestone frameworks given the variety of traditions of moral reasoning that clinician-trainees and their colleagues might properly employ. Methods: We developed an observed … Read more

Julie Childers and Bob Arnold’s (2019) article, “The Inner Lives of Doctors: Physician Emotion in the Care of the Seriously Ill,” uses Kübler-Ross’s influential work on death and dying to remind us that the experiences contained within her framework relate not only to patients but also to members of their care teams. Childers and Arnold’s … Read more

Today’s medical training environment exposes medical trainees to many aspects of what has been called “the hidden curriculum.” In this article, we examine the relationship between two aspects of the hidden curriculum, the performance of emotional labor and the characterization of patients and proxies as “bad,” by analyzing clinical ethics discussions with resident trainees at … Read more

New gene-editing tools challenge conventional policy proscriptions of research aimed at either human germline gene editing or human enhancement by potentially lowering technical barriers to both kinds of intervention. Some recent gene-editing reports have begun to take up the prospect of germline editing, but most experts are in broad agreement that research should prioritize medical … Read more