Wesley Smith: CULTURE OF DEATH: The assault on Medical Ethics in America, by Wesley J. Smith, Encounter Books, 2000.

"But acknowledging past evils is far easier than recognizing abuses in the present. Informed critics worry that contemporary medical research is, once again, close to being out of control. According to Vera Hassner Sharav, director of the watchdog group [now Alliance for Human Research Protection, AHRP], a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting human subjects from unethical exploitation in medical experiments,

"'While America is certainly not Germany or the Soviet Union, our physicians and medical researchers are crossing lines that should not be crossed. There are substantial problems with [many researchers'] mindsets and inherent structural weaknesses in the system of checks and balances that permit terrible abuses.'" [p.47]

"The trouble with the IRB system," Vera Sharav told me, "is that they represent the research center [more than they do human subjects]. Most of the members are employees of the research center and reflect the culture of the research center." Sharav further believes that "too many universities have become places where they simply want more money. They don't think enough about ethical issues. They don't focus sufficiently on the advancement of knowledge. They really prostitute themselves for research funding."

"Sharav's criticism is all the more credible when the tremendous stakes involved in the medical research enterprise are considered Sharav complains, "Too often, the system is a rubber stamp. It's a sham." Adding weight to Sharav's point: the chief federal official overseeing the safety and ethics of experiments using human subjects, Dr. Greg Koski, recently proclaimed that the research system 'may be entirely out of control.'" [p. 54; See, Philip Hilts, "Medical Research Official Cites Ethics Woes," New York Times, Aug. 17, 2000.]