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| 1. | Title | Title of document | Ethical stumbling blocks in uncovering folate deficiency as a preventable cause of spina bifida |
| 2. | Creator | Author's name, affiliation, country | Lars H Breimer; Örebro University Hospital, SE-701 85 Örebro, SWEDEN |
| 3. | Subject | Discipline(s) | |
| 3. | Subject | Keyword(s) | |
| 4. | Description | Abstract | The year 2016 witnessed the anniversaries of several key events related to the prevention of neural tube defects (NTD) with folate supplementation. However, the road leading up to this achievement was full of stumbling blocks, both in terms of research ethics and researcher ethics. First, the decisions of ethics review boards differed with respect to allowing placebo groups in folate trials, thus reducing the level of evidence obtained from the earliest studies. Second, statisticians insisted on analysing the outcome of a trial by intention-to-treat – which turned out to be non-significant – rather than by treatment received, which was statistically significant. Third, the recognition of positive results was stymied by the reluctance of some researchers to recognise and quote others' contributions. All this needlessly delayed the recognition of the NTD-preventive effects of folate by a decade. The story of the prevention of NTD thus offers insights into research inadequacies that have the potential to impede the advance of medical science, with the ethical aspects having the most immediate impact. Efficient ethics review boards play a major role worldwide and if they play safe, they may risk disallowing high-quality studies of great public health import. |
| 5. | Publisher | Organizing agency, location | Forum for Medical Ethics Society |
| 6. | Contributor | Sponsor(s) | |
| 7. | Date | (YYYY-MM-DD) | 2017-05-18 |
| 8. | Type | Status & genre | |
| 8. | Type | Type | |
| 9. | Format | File format | HTML , PDF |
| 10. | Identifier | Uniform Resource Identifier | https://ijme.in/articles/ethical-stumbling-blocks-in-uncovering-folate-deficiency-as-a-preventable-cause-of-spina-bifida/ |
| 11. | Source | Title; vol., no. (year) | Indian Journal of Medical Ethics;: The right to life |
| 12. | Language | English=en | en |
| 13. | Relation | Supp. Files | |
| 14. | Coverage | Geo-spatial location, chronological period, research sample (gender, age, etc.) | |
| 15. | Rights | Copyright and permissions | All articles published in IJME are available on its website free of charge. The copyright for published material belongs to IJME/FMES. IJME freely permits the reprint (or reproduction on a website) of articles from the journal, as long as this is for non-commercial use and appropriate credit is given to the author and the journal and publication details are mentioned. The commercial use of our content can be made only after obtaining permission from and on payment to IJME. This is intended to support production of the journal. |