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Bioethics Commission's Report on Pediatric Medical Countermeasures |
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March 26, 2013,
Volume 59, No. 26 |
In a report released on March 19, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues concluded that the federal government would have to take multiple steps before anthrax vaccine trials with children could be ethically considered. The Bioethics Commission, chaired by Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, was responding to a request from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius who last year asked the members to study the question of anthrax vaccine trials with children after receiving a recommendation from another federal committee that such research be initiated, pending ethical review.
“The safety of our children is paramount and we have to get this precisely right,” Dr. Gutmann said. “The Bioethics Commission concludes that many significant steps would have to be taken, including additional minimal-risk research with adult volunteers, before pediatric anthrax vaccine trials prior to an attack should be considered.”
Dr. Gutmann also authored a perspective piece in the March 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine about the issues raised in the report. That article is available at www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1302093
Penn faculty member Dr. Anita L. Allen, the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law, professor of philosophy and a senior fellow in the bioethics department of the Perelman School of Medicine, also serves on the Presidential Commission. She was formerly a deputy dean for academic affairs at Penn Law.
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Almanac -
March 26, 2013, Volume 59, No. 26
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