Highest standards of human subject research
As an oncologist spending my career performing and overseeing controlled clinical
trials, I have great admiration for those individuals who volunteer as human subjects in
the full knowledge that their participation in clinical research may ultimately only help
others and not themselves. It takes a special kind of person to ingest a potential
placebo to enable better medicines for future generations. We know ethical standards
in human research have a checkered history, but the last 40 years have seen great
strides based on the three fundamental principles enshrined in the 1979 Belmont
Report underpinning US law on human research. These are 1) respect, of people’s
autonomy and consent, treating them courteously, 2) beneficence, maximizing the
benefits while minimizing the risks of research, and 3) justice, ensuring reasonable,
non‐exploitative, well‐considered procedures are administered fairly and equally.
Since Belmont, these principles have been upheld within the academy by independent
committees called institutional research boards (IRBs). AUB is fortunate to have a
genuinely world‐class IRB divided into two branches, for biomedical research and for
social‐behavioral sciences. Led by Dr. Fuad Ziyadeh (above), also our chair of the
internal medicine department at the Faculty of Medicine, a large and dedicated team
of volunteer faculty experts, analysts and lay members
work together under the oversight of our outstanding
Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) directed by
Dr. Ali Abu‐Alfa (left) and Provost Mohamed Harajli as
responsible IO or Institutional Official.
It is vital work as we have made it no secret that, to hold a position as a globally relevant and indeed pioneering seat of higher learning, AUB must elevate its academic research in our areas of excellence. This would be unobtainable in the experimental sciences
without our ability to carry out ethical review and approval of research proposals
involving human participants, the alternative being animal studies, tissue culture, and
some low‐risk, low‐impact human surveys.