A Moral Foundation for Anti-Doping: How Far Have We Progressed? Where Are the Limits?

Clarity about the ethical justification of anti-doping is essential. In its absence, critics multiply and confusion abounds. Three broad reasons are typically offered in anti-doping's defense: to protect athletes' health; to promote fairness; and to preserve meaning and values in sport - what the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code refers to as the spirit of sport. Protecting health is itself an important value, but many sports encourage athletes to take significant risks. The case against doping is buttressed by concern for athletes' health, but it cannot be the sole foundation. Promoting fairness is vital in all sports as the metaphor of the level playing field attests. But playing fields can be leveled by providing performance-enhancing drugs to all competitors. When doping is prohibited, fairness is aided by effective anti-doping. But the fundamental justification for anti-doping is found in the meanings and values we pursue in and through sport.

Ripples: What to Expect When You Serve on a Bioethics Commission.

Cloning was the issue that put the National Bioethics Advisory Commission on the map, but the first clue that NBAC would address cloning was a terse fax from the White House to each of us who served on the Commission. The fax noted that with the birth of the sheep named Dolly, mammalian cloning was now a reality, and it tasked NBAC with providing advice on the ethics of human cloning and how the nation should respond to it. We were given ninety days to report our findings. That's a very tight deadline for a report written by a committee, but we met it, and along the way, I learned important lessons. My goal in this essay is to share what I learned at the ramparts of what I will call, with apologies to George Lucas, the Cloning Wars and through NBAC's work on five additional reports.

IRB practices and policies regarding the secondary research use of biospecimens.

BACKGROUND: As sharing and secondary research use of biospecimens increases, IRBs and researchers face the challenge of protecting and respecting donors without comprehensive regulations addressing the human subject protection issues posed by biobanking. Variation in IRB biobanking policies about these issues has not been well documented. METHODS: This paper reports on data from a survey of IRB Administrative Directors from 60 institutions affiliated with the Clinical and Translation Science Awards (CTSAs) about their policies and practices regarding secondary use and sharing of biospecimens. Specifically, IRB ADs were asked about consent for future use of biospecimens, assignment of risk for studies using biobanked specimens, and sharing of biospecimens/data. RESULTS: Our data indicate that IRBs take varying approaches to protocol review, risk assessment, and data sharing, especially when specimens are not anonymized. CONCLUSION: Unclear or divergent policies regarding biospecimen research among IRBs may constitute a barrier to advancing genetic studies and to inter-institutional collaboration, given different institutional requirements for human subjects protections.

Publishing SNP genotypes of human embryonic stem cell lines: policy statement of the International Stem Cell Forum Ethics Working Party.

Novel methods and associated tools permitting individual identification in publicly accessible SNP databases have become a debatable issue. There is growing concern that current technical and ethical safeguards to protect the identities of donors could be insufficient. In the context of human embryonic stem cell research, there are no studies focusing on the probability that an hESC line donor could be identified by analyzing published SNP profiles and associated genotypic and phenotypic information. We present the International Stem Cell Forum (ISCF) Ethics Working Party's Policy Statement on "Publishing SNP Genotypes of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines (hESC)". The Statement prospectively addresses issues surrounding the publication of genotypic data and associated annotations of hESC lines in open access databases. It proposes a balanced approach between the goals of open science and data sharing with the respect for fundamental bioethical principles (autonomy, privacy, beneficence, justice and research merit and integrity).

Making sense of fairness in sports.

Cheating evolves constantly. Dozens of athletes were barred from the Winter Olympics for taking banned substances. Gene doping is on the horizon. Questions have arisen about which athletes count as "female." What does it take to keep sports fair? And what does fairness require?