Perinatal substance abuse and human subjects research: are privacy protections adequate?

Privacy and ethics in pediatric environmental health research-part I: genetic and prenatal testing

The pressing need for empirically informed public policies aimed at understanding and promoting children's health has challenged environmental scientists to modify traditional research paradigms and reevaluate their roles and obligations toward research participants. Methodologic approaches to children's environmental health research raise ethical challenges for which federal regulations may provide insufficient guidance. In this article I begin with a general discussion of privacy concerns and informed consent within pediatric environmental health research contexts. I then turn to specific ethical challenges associated with research on genetic determinants of environmental risk, prenatal studies and maternal privacy, and data causing inflicted insight or affecting the informational rights of third parties.

Methodological issues associated with studying an illegal act: assisted dying

The experience of receiving patient requests for assistance in prematurely ending life can represent both an ethical and legal dilemma for nurses in the United States. Similarly, the study of nurses' involvement with such a sensitive topic also poses risks to the study participants, the researcher, and the nursing profession's covenant with society. The purpose of this article is to explore methodological issues and approaches associated with studying an ethically and legally sensitive issue, and to describe application of these approaches to a study of oncology nurses' experiences with receiving requests for assisted dying from terminally ill patients with cancer.