Open AccessEmpirical Analysis of Current Approaches to Incidental Findings
Author(s) -
Lawrenz Frances,
Sobotka Suzanne
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the journal of law, medicine & ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.515
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1748-720X
pISSN - 1073-1105
DOI - 10.1111/j.1748-720x.2008.00267.x
Subject(s) - current (fluid) , psychology , computer science , physics , thermodynamics
This paper presents results found through searching publicly available U.S. data sources for information about how to handle incidental fndings (IF) in human subjects research, especially in genetics and genomics research, neuroimaging research, and CT colonography research. We searched the Web sites of 14 federal agencies, 22 professional societies, and 100 universities, as well as used the search engine Google for actual consent forms that had been posted on the Internet. Our analysis of these documents showed that there is very little public guidance available for researchers as to how to deal with incidental fndings. Moreover, the guidance available is not consistent.