Angell M. The Ethics of Clinical Research
Angell M. The Ethics of Clinical Research
Angell M. The Ethics of Clinical Research
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Some of these issues are raised by Lurie and Wolfe elsewhere in this issue of the
Journal. They discuss the ethics of ongoing trials in the Third World of regimens to
prevent the vertical transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection.7
All except one of the trials employ placebo-treated control groups, despite the fact that
zidovudine has already been clearly shown to cut the rate of vertical transmission
greatly and is now recommended in the United States for all HIV-infected pregnant
women. The justifications are reminiscent of those for the Tuskegee study: Women in
the Third World would not receive antiretroviral treatment anyway, so the investigators
are simply observing what would happen to the subjects' infants if there were no study.
And a placebo-controlled study is the fastest, most efficient way to obtain unambiguous
information that will be of greatest value in the Third World. Thus, in response to
protests from Wolfe and others to the secretary of Health and Human Services, the
directors of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) — the organizations sponsoring the studies — argued, "It is an
unfortunate fact that the current standard of perinatal care for the HIV-infected pregnant
women in the sites of the studies does not include any HIV prophylactic intervention at
all," and the inclusion of placebo controls "will result in the most rapid, accurate, and
reliable answer to the question of the value of the intervention being studied compared
to the local standard of care."8
Also in this issue of the Journal, Whalen et al. report the results of a clinical trial in
Uganda of various regimens of prophylaxis against tuberculosis in HIV-infected adults,
most of whom had positive tuberculin skin tests.9 This study, too, employed a placebo-
treated control group, and in some ways it is analogous to the studies criticized by Lurie
and Wolfe. In the United States it would probably be impossible to carry out such a
study, because of long-standing official recommendations that HIV-infected persons
with positive tuberculin skin tests receive prophylaxis against tuberculosis. The first was
issued in 1990 by the CDC's Advisory Committee for Elimination of Tuberculosis.10 It
stated that tuberculin-test-positive persons with HIV infection "should be considered
candidates for preventive therapy." Three years later, the recommendation was reiterated
more strongly in a joint statement by the American Thoracic Society and the CDC, in
collaboration with the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American
Academy of Pediatrics.11 According to this statement, ". . . the identification of persons
with dual infection and the administration of preventive therapy to these persons is of
great importance." However, some believe that these recommendations were premature,
since they were based largely on the success of prophylaxis in HIV-negative persons.12
Whether the study by Whalen et al. was ethical depends, in my view, entirely on the
strength of the preexisting evidence. Only if there was genuine doubt about the benefits
of prophylaxis would a placebo group be ethically justified. This is not the place to
review the scientific evidence, some of which is discussed in the editorial of Msamanga
and Fawzi elsewhere in this issue.13 Suffice it to say that the case is debatable.
Msamanga and Fawzi conclude that "future studies should not include a placebo group,
since preventive therapy should be considered the standard of care." I agree. The
difficult question is whether there should have been a placebo group in the first place.
Although I believe an argument can be made that a placebo-controlled trial was ethically
justifiable because it was still uncertain whether prophylaxis would work, it should not
be argued that it was ethical because no prophylaxis is the "local standard of care" in
sub-Saharan Africa. For reasons discussed by Lurie and Wolfe, that reasoning is badly
flawed.7 As mentioned earlier, the Declaration of Helsinki requires control groups to
receive the "best" current treatment, not the local one. The shift in wording between
"best" and "local" may be slight, but the implications are profound. Acceptance of this
ethical relativism could result in widespread exploitation of vulnerable Third World
populations for research programs that could not be carried out in the sponsoring
country.14 Furthermore, it directly contradicts the Department of Health and Human
Services' own regulations governing U.S.-sponsored research in foreign countries,15 as
well as joint guidelines for research in the Third World issued by WHO and the Council
for International Organizations of Medical Sciences,16 which require that human
subjects receive protection at least equivalent to that in the sponsoring country. The fact
that Whalen et al. offered isoniazid to the placebo group when it was found superior to
placebo indicates that they were aware of their responsibility to all the subjects in the
trial.
The Journal has taken the position that it will not publish reports of unethical research,
regardless of their scientific merit.14,17 After deliberating at length about the study by
Whalen at al., the editors concluded that publication was ethically justified, although
there remain differences among us. The fact that the subjects gave informed consent and
the study was approved by the institutional review board at the University Hospitals of
Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University and by the Ugandan National AIDS
Research Subcommittee certainly supported our decision but did not allay all our
misgivings. It is still important to determine whether clinical studies are consistent with
preexisting, widely accepted ethical guidelines, such as the Declaration of Helsinki, and
with federal regulations, since they cannot be influenced by pressures specific to a
particular study.
Quite apart from the merits of the study by Whalen et al., there is a larger issue. There
appears to be a general retreat from the clear principles enunciated in the Nuremberg
Code and the Declaration of Helsinki as applied to research in the Third World. Why is
that? Is it because the "local standard of care" is different? I don't think so. In my view,
that is merely a self-serving justification after the fact. Is it because diseases and their
treatments are very different in the Third World, so that information gained in the
industrialized world has no relevance and we have to start from scratch? That, too,
seems an unlikely explanation, although here again it is often offered as a justification.
Sometimes there may be relevant differences between populations, but that cannot be
assumed. Unless there are specific indications to the contrary, the safest and most
reasonable position is that people everywhere are likely to respond similarly to the same
treatment.
I think we have to look elsewhere for the real reasons. One of them may be a slavish
adherence to the tenets of clinical trials. According to these, all trials should be
randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled, if at all possible. That rigidity may
explain the NIH's pressure on Marc Lallemant to include a placebo group in his study,
as described by Lurie and Wolfe.7 Sometimes journals are blamed for the problem,
because they are thought to demand strict conformity to the standard methods. That is
not true, at least not at this journal. We do not want a scientifically neat study if it is
ethically flawed, but like Lurie and Wolfe we believe that in many cases it is possible,
with a little ingenuity, to have both scientific and ethical rigor.
The retreat from ethical principles may also be explained by some of the exigencies of
doing clinical research in an increasingly regulated and competitive environment.
Research in the Third World looks relatively attractive as it becomes better funded and
regulations at home become more restrictive. Despite the existence of codes requiring
that human subjects receive at least the same protection abroad as at home, they are still
honored partly in the breach. The fact remains that many studies are done in the Third
World that simply could not be done in the countries sponsoring the work. Clinical trials
have become a big business, with many of the same imperatives. To survive, it is
necessary to get the work done as quickly as possible, with a minimum of obstacles.
When these considerations prevail, it seems as if we have not come very far from
Tuskegee after all. Those of us in the research community need to redouble our
commitment to the highest ethical standards, no matter where the research is conducted,
and sponsoring agencies need to enforce those standards, not undercut them.
References
4. Twenty years after: the legacy of the Tuskegee syphilis study. Hastings Cent
Rep 1992;22:29-40.[Medline]
9. Whalen CC, Johnson JL, Okwera A, et al. A trial of three regimens to prevent
tuberculosis in Ugandan adults infected with the human immunodeficiency
virus. N Engl J Med 1997;337:801-808.[Abstract/Full Text]
10. The use of preventive therapy for tuberculous infection in the United States:
recommendations of the Advisory Committee for Elimination of Tuberculosis.
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1990;39:9-12.[Medline]
11. Bass JB Jr, Farer LS, Hopewell PC, et al. Treatment of tuberculosis and
tuberculosis infection in adults and children. Am J Respir Crit Care Med
1994;149:1359-1374.[Abstract]
12. De Cock KM, Grant A, Porter JD. Preventive therapy for tuberculosis in HIV-
infected persons: international recommendations, research, and practice. Lancet
1995;345:833-836.[CrossRef][Medline] HTU UTH UTH
13. Msamanga GI, Fawzi WW. The double burden of HIV infection and
tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa. N Engl J Med 1997;337:849-851.[Full Text] HTU UTH
17. Angell M. The Nazi hypothermia experiments and unethical research today. N
Engl J Med 1990;322:1462-1464.[Medline] HTU UTH
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