The FDA in the Crosshairs-Science, Politics, and Abortion.

In this Viewpoint, the Supreme Court case FDA v AHM is used to illustrate the tension the FDA faces between science and politics, and state authority over abortion vs federal authority over which drugs may be marketed nationwide.

Responding to the Call to Meaningfully Assess Institutional Review Board Effectiveness.

This Viewpoint discusses the difficult task of creating a stakeholder-driven, evidence-based approach to assessing institutional review board effectiveness beyond regulatory compliance.

Extending the US Food and Drug Administration's Postmarket Authorities.

Importance: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expansive regulatory flexibility regarding the quality and quantity of evidence it deems sufficient to approve new drugs, which has been increasingly used to grant approval based on less certain evidence of benefit. However, the FDA's regulatory flexibility with respect to standards for approval has not been matched by sufficient stringency in its exercise of postmarket safeguards, including the FDA's authority and willingness to require confirmation of benefit through postmarket efficacy studies or to withdraw approval when benefit is not confirmed. Objective: To identify and evaluate opportunities for the FDA to extend its authority to require postmarket efficacy studies and use expedited withdrawal procedures for drugs approved despite substantial residual uncertainty outside the accelerated approval pathway. Evidence: The FDA's current approaches to regulatory flexibility with respect to standards for drug approval; examples of shortcomings in the postmarket period; existing statutes and regulations governing the scope of the FDA's authority to impose and enforce postmarket study requirements; and recent legislative reform and agency action regarding the accelerated approval pathway. Findings: Drawing on the broad language of the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the FDA could independently extend its core accelerated approval authorities-required postmarket efficacy studies and expedited withdrawal procedures-to any drug approved with substantial residual uncertainty regarding benefit, such as those supported by a single pivotal trial. To avoid exacerbating existing problems that have become evident during the past 3 decades of experience using the accelerated approval pathway, however, the FDA must ensure that postmarket studies are well designed and completed quickly, while compelling expedited withdrawal when needed. Conclusions and Relevance: Under current FDA approaches to drug approval, patients, clinicians, and payers may be left with little confidence about a drug's benefit not only when it first enters the market but also for an extended period thereafter. If policy makers continue to favor earlier market access over evidentiary certainty, flexible approvals must be matched by more expansive use of postmarket safeguards, an approach possible within the FDA's existing legal authorities.

The Ethics of Expanded Access Research.

This Viewpoint discusses the benefits of expanded access research, the usefulness of expanded access data, the issues surrounding cost and transparency, and the adjusted role of institutional review boards.

Navigating the Expanded Access Pathway to Investigational Drugs as an Academic Oncologist.

This qualitative study explores academic oncologists' needs and satisfaction with expanded patient access to investigational drugs.

How Do Accredited Organizations Evaluate the Quality and Effectiveness of Their Human Research Protection Programs?

BACKGROUND: Meaningfully evaluating the quality of institutional review boards (IRBs) and human research protection programs (HRPPs) is a long-recognized challenge. To be accredited by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP), organizations must demonstrate that they measure and improve HRPP "quality, effectiveness, and efficiency" (QEE). We sought to learn how AAHRPP-accredited organizations interpret and satisfy this standard, in order to assess strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in current approaches and to inform recommendations for improvement. METHODS: We conducted 3 small-group interviews with a total of 19 participant representatives of accredited organizations at the 2019 AAHRPP annual meeting. Participants were eligible if they had familiarity with their organization's approach to satisfying the relevant QEE standard. RESULTS: Participants reported lacking clear definitions for HRPP quality or effectiveness but described various approaches to assessing QEE, typically focused on turnaround time, compliance, and researcher satisfaction. Evaluation of IRB members was described as relatively superficial and information regarding research subject experience was not reported as central to QEE assessment, although participants described several efforts to improve consideration of patient, subject, and community perspectives in IRB review. Participants also described efforts to educate and build relationships with key stakeholders as important features of a high-quality HRPP. While generally satisfied with their approaches, participants expressed concern about resource and time constraints that pushed them to be reactive and automatic about QEE, rather than proactive and critical. CONCLUSIONS: The relevant AAHRPP accreditation standard may obscure critical gaps in defining and measuring QEE elements. We recommend that AAHRPP: (1) offer a definition of QEE or require accredited organizations to provide their own, to help clarify the rationale and goals behind assessment and improvement efforts, and (2) require accredited organizations to establish QEE objectives and measures focused on participant outcomes and deliberative quality during protocol review.

Preapproval Promises to Voluntarily Withdraw FDA-Approved Drugs.

This Viewpoint provides recommendations for improvements to strengthen legal obligations and decrease ambiguity for the US Food and Drug Administration regarding their reliance on voluntary preapproval withdrawal pledges.

Perspectives of Academic Oncologists About Offering Expanded Access to Investigational Drugs.

Importance: The expanded access (EA) pathway permits patients to be treated with investigational medical products outside clinical trials. Because cancer care is a common indication for which EA is sought and these efforts require physician management, understanding oncologists' perspectives can help illuminate factors influencing patient access. Objective: To learn how oncologists practicing at academic medical centers (AMCs) perceive EA and their role in offering it. Design, Setting, and Participants: This qualitative study used data from semistructured interviews conducted from February 2020 to September 2021 with a purposive sample of oncologists recruited from large, urban AMCs in the northeast United States. Oncologists who had submitted at least 1 single-patient EA request to the institutional review boards at the University of Pennsylvania, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, NYU Langone Health, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute from January 1, 2014, through January 31, 2020, were eligible to participate. Data were analyzed from July 2021 to March 2022. Main Outcomes and Measures: Interviews focused on oncologist practice demographics, experience with EA, factors relevant to decisions to pursue EA and comfort with those decisions, perspectives on oncologists' role in EA, perspectives on the FDA's role, and the Right to Try pathway to access investigational drugs. Results: Eligible oncologists were interviewed until thematic saturation was reached, resulting in 25 interviews; most participants were women (15 participants [60%]), reported primarily treating adult patients (15 participants [60%]), had more than 10 years of clinical experience (16 participants [64%]), and had submitted at least 2 single-patient EA requests to their institutional review boards during the relevant period (14 participants [56%]). Oncologists viewed EA as an important tool for securing what they determined to be the best treatment option for their patients based on their own expert assessment of available data. Interviewees reported that they would rather access interventions as commercially available products or through clinical trials; however, if the preferred option was not available through these means, they viewed pursuit of EA as part of their obligation to patients, while often recognizing the potential for inequities in the broader patient population beyond their institutions. Participating oncologists felt confident pursuing investigational drugs for treatment use, despite the absence of FDA marketing approval, and did not necessarily view EA as a last resort. Conclusions and Relevance: These findings indicate that oncologists practicing in large academic settings sought to treat patients with the interventions they deemed most likely to be beneficial, regardless of approval status. As such, they viewed EA as an unexceptional means to obtain promising products, although it remains unclear whether their confidence in evaluating investigational treatments was justified. Future research should examine whether oncologists outside large AMCs share this confidence, as differences may influence patient access to the EA treatment pathway.

Estimated Clinical Trial Capacity of Sites Participating in the COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Expanded Access Program.

This cross-sectional study estimates the trial capacity of sites participating in the COVID-19 convalescent plasma expanded access program.

Reopening schools safely in the face of COVID-19: Can cluster randomized trials help?

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the challenges of evidence-based health policymaking, as critical precautionary decisions, such as school closures, had to be made urgently on the basis of little evidence. As primary and secondary schools once again close in the face of surging infections, there is an opportunity to rigorously study their reopening. School-aged children appear to be less affected by COVID-19 than adults, yet schools may drive community transmission of the virus. Given the impact of school closures on both education and the economy, schools cannot remain closed indefinitely. But when and how can they be reopened safely? We argue that a cluster randomized trial is a rigorous and ethical way to resolve these uncertainties. We discuss key scientific, ethical, and resource considerations both to inform trial design of school reopenings and to prompt discussion of the merits and feasibility of conducting such a trial.

The role of community engagement in addressing bystander risks in research: The case of a Zika virus controlled human infection study.

There is limited guidance on how to assess the ethical acceptability of research risks that extend beyond research participants to third parties (or "research bystanders"). Community or stakeholder engagement has been proposed as one way to address potential harms to community members, including bystanders. Despite widespread agreement on the importance of community engagement in biomedical research, this umbrella term includes many different goals and approaches, agreement on which is ethically required or recommended for a particular context. We analyse the case of a potential Zika virus human challenge trial to assess whether and how community engagement can help promote the ethical acceptability of research posing risks to bystanders. We conclude that, in addition to having intrinsic value, community engagement can improve the identification of bystander risks, effective approaches to minimizing them, and transparency about bystander risks for host communities.

Regulatory flexibility for COVID-19 research.

Clinical research is critical to combatting COVID-19, but regulatory requirements for human subjects protection may sometimes pose a challenge in pandemic circumstances. Although regulators have offered some helpful guidance for research during the pandemic, we identify further compliance challenges regarding institutional review board (IRB) review and approval, informed consent, emergency research, and research involving incarcerated people. Our proposals for regulatory flexibility in these areas seek to satisfy the goals of protecting participants and promoting the development of high-quality evidence to improve patient care. These recommendations may have relevance beyond the COVID-19 pandemic to enhance the efficiency of research oversight and participant protection more broadly.

Minimal or reasonable? Considering the ethical threshold for research risks to nonconsenting bystanders and implications for nonconsenting participants.

When research poses risks to non-participant bystanders, it is not always practicable to obtain their consent. One approach to assessing how much research risk may be imposed on nonconsenting bystanders is to examine analogous circumstances, including risk thresholds deemed acceptable for nonconsenting research participants and for nonconsensual risks imposed outside the research setting. For nonconsenting participants, US research regulations typically limit risks to those deemed to be "minimal." Outside the research context, US tort law tolerates a more flexible "reasonable" risk threshold. This article advances a preliminary case that nonconsenting participants and nonconsenting bystanders exposed to similar research risks may be entitled to the same level of protection, but that risks generated by research may not be special in kind. Thus, limiting research risks to those that are "reasonable," rather than demanding that they be held to the "minimal" standard, may be the best approach for both nonconsenting participants and nonconsenting bystanders. Further work is needed to establish whether the descriptive standards used to support the analogies relied on here are normatively justifiable, as well as the extent to which the minimal risk standard and the reasonable risk standard would lead to meaningfully different outcomes in practice.

The right to withdraw from controlled human infection studies: Justifications and avoidance.

The right to withdraw from research without penalty is well established around the world. However, it has been challenged in some corners of bioethics based on concerns about various harms-to participants, to scientific integrity, and to research bystanders-that may stem from withdrawal. These concerns have become particularly salient in emerging debates about the ethics of controlled human infection (CHI) studies in which participants are intentionally infected with pathogens, often in inpatient settings with extensive follow-up. In this article, I provide support for preserving the right to withdraw from research without penalty and demonstrate that it is also typically justified in the specific context of CHI studies. The right is well aligned with individual freedoms outside the research setting, where autonomous individuals are permitted to engage in behaviors that will foreseeably cause them harm; where they cannot be compelled to satisfy contracts for their services, nor penalized for failure to do so; and where their behavior is not constrained by public health authorities except in extreme circumstances. These freedoms are supported by U.S. law, as well as by ethical analysis that is more globally relevant. The problems associated with the right to withdraw, however, remain. The best approach to addressing them is not to restrict the right but rather to avoid initiating research when withdrawal would be especially problematic. If research proceeds, steps can still be taken to minimize participant withdrawal without infringing the right. Investigators can avoid participant surprise through informed consent focused on a study's most burdensome aspects and promote study completion through financial incentives. Should participants nonetheless seek to withdraw, investigators may attempt to persuade them not to do so by encouraging consideration of the range of potential harms that may result. Researchers conducting CHI studies and other research from which withdrawal might be especially problematic should prepare for the possibility of participant withdrawal, respect participant requests to withdraw without penalty, and incorporate various measures to avoid such requests.

Academic Advocacy: Opportunities to Influence Health and Science Policy Under U.S. Lobbying Law.

Medical school faculty and their colleagues in schools of nursing, public health, social work, and elsewhere often research issues of critical importance to health and science policy. When academics engage with government policymakers to advocate for change based on their research, however, they may find themselves engaged in "lobbying," thereby entering a complex environment of legal requirements and institutional policies that they may not fully understand. To promote academic advocacy, this article explains what is and is not legally permitted when it comes to engaging with policymakers and encourages academic institutions to facilitate permissible advocacy activities.U.S. law permits academic researchers to conduct certain types of policy-focused advocacy without running afoul of legal restrictions on lobbying. Academics acting in their personal capacities and with their own resources may freely engage with policymakers in any branch of government to provide their expertise and advocate for desired outcomes. When acting in their professional capacities, academics are free to engage in most advocacy activities directed to the executive and judicial branches, and they also may advocate to influence legislation and legislators within certain limits that are particularly relevant to academic work. In all cases, academics must take care to not use restricted funds for lobbying.Academic researchers have an important role to play in advancing evidence-based health and science policy. They should familiarize themselves with legal restrictions and opportunities to influence policy based on their research, and their institutions should actively support them in doing so.