Scientific Research: Continued Vigilance Critical to Protecting Human Subjects

GAO discussed the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) efforts to protect human research subjects, focusing on the prevention, monitoring, and enforcement activities of the National Institutes of Health's Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). GAO noted that: (1) to ensure the protection of human research subjects, the agencies require researchers to make assurance agreements that they will comply with federal human subject protection requirements and uphold ethical standards; (2) the agencies also use institutional review boards (IRB), local review panels that review research plans to ensure that human subjects are protected; (3) both FDA and OPRR conduct on-site visits and inspections, clinical trials, investigations of allegations of researcher misconduct, and IRB reviews to identify violations of protection requirements; (4) to enforce the regulations, FDA and OPRR have requested modifications to research plans, restricted researchers' use of drugs, disqualified, suspended, or criminally prosecuted researchers; and (5) oversight effectiveness is hampered by heavy IRB workloads and competing priorities, organizational conflicts-of-interest, limited site visits and inspections, and pressures resulting from differing perceptions on the need for research versus treatment.