News by Subject Policy & Ethics

As if the COVID-19 pandemic isn't scary enough, the flu season is not far away. How severe will the flu season be as it converges with the COVID-19 outbreak? What can we do to prepare? Dr. Benjamin Singer, a Northwestern Medicine pulmonologist who treats COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit, outlines the best defense against influenza, which also may protect against coronavirus.

Every major medical center in America sits on a gold mine of patient data that could be worth millions of dollars to companies that could use it to develop new treatments and technologies. A new framework could help them do so more responsibly, going beyond the minimum legal requirements and respecting patients by giving them more say in how their individual data may be used.

Scientists have found that some people being treated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have a greater tendency to commit violent crime. In addition, this effect seems to continue for up to 12 weeks after stopping SSRI treatment. This work is published in the peer-reviewed journal European Neuropsychopharmacology*, alongside a linked comment. The authors of both the paper and the comment note that the work indicates an association (rather than cause and effect) and urge caution in how the findings are interpreted.

Allowing consenting volunteers to be deliberately infected with COVID-19 for the purposes of developing a vaccine could be done ethically and potentially speed up its development, a University of Warwick researcher has argued in new research.

Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health have found that death records of LGBTQ youth who died by suicide were substantially more likely to mention bullying as a factor than their non-LGBTQ peers. The researchers reviewed nearly 10,000 death records of youth ages 10 to 19 who died by suicide in the United States from 2003 to 2017.

A new Pew Research Center report examines how Americans' confidence in scientists have shifted amid the COVID-19 outbreak and their views on whether scientists should play an active role in policy discussions about science-related topics.

Current medical guidelines risk unlawful deaths of patients -- with doctors, hospitals, and even the government potentially liable -- if a second peak forces hard choices due to shortages of ventilators and other critical care resources.

A new Tel Aviv University-led study offers new evidence that the complexity of contemporary analytical methods in science contributes to the variability of research outcomes.

New England Journal of Medicine article offers policy recommendations for triage protocols that save the most lives and protect core values, such as the equal moral worth of all people.

Pregnant and breastfeeding women have been excluded from clinical trials of drugs to treat COVID-19, and as result, there is no safety data to inform clinical decisions.