Summary
Clinical research is always regarded as a branch of healthcare science that plays a vital role in determining medicine effectiveness, safety, and treatment programs intended specifically for human use only. It plays a key role in issues concerning treatment, prevention, diagnosis, or even relieving symptoms of various diseases. However, clinical research is different from its practices mainly because established treatments are deployed in clinical practice. At the same time, evidence is collected to determine the form of therapy in clinical research.
Typically, clinical research with human subjects is essential as it plays a key role in helping understand and improve general human health. This research paper is extensively going to look at a vulnerable population: the street children and the ethical issues surrounding this type of population, the role of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), and their importance in research.
The street children deserve much protection compared to normal people against the potential risks that might arise. Individuals from this group tend to have a higher chance of negative risk outcomes from participating in the research (Friesen et al., 2017). It is the responsibility of the IRB, researchers, and anyone reviewing clinical research to assess and evaluate the impacts of the street children participating in the research (Santelli et al., 2017).
This indicates why the national commission’s policies, rules, and standards protected the human subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Science Research in 1974. It is also hard to research the various vulnerable groups as it becomes difficult to obtain ethical approval to conduct the research effectively (Largent & Lynch, 2017).
A perfect example is researching street children; it is hard for them to offer informed consent for the research as they are still minors. According to a certain study done in South Africa on street children as the vulnerable population, the ethical principles and policies of competence, respect, justice, autonomy, disclosure, and non-maleficence are all applicable.
Role of Institutional Review Boards
According to the National Institute of Health (2008), in the regulations formulated by the food and drug administration (FDA), the IRB is regarded as an agency specifically delegated to monitor, explore and review any biomedical research involving human beings as its elements. IRB is given the authority to approve, disapprove and even discard research depending on various issues (Lapid, 2019).
The board is also responsible for protecting the vulnerable groups, which in this case are the street children, by ensuring that the risks to the individual participating in the research are low and minimized. It also ensures that the selection process of the street children, when appropriate to participate in the research, is done equally for it to become successful.
In conclusion, it is clear that, together with the Human Research protections, IRB has played a key role in advancing knowledge in the nursing sector, biomedical, and most importantly, in the social science field. Any form of research in any given country must be guided by the laws, rules, and regulations.
The research participants should also be a true image of diversity: individuals from different backgrounds, cultures, and conditions. This does not exclude vulnerable individuals, but caution has to be taken. Lack of diversity in any research may contribute significantly to ethical consequences, indicating that individuals from vulnerable populations must be included in the research.
References
Friesen, P., Kearns, L., Redman, B., & Caplan, A. L. (2017). Rethinking the Belmont report?. The American Journal of Bioethics, 17(7), 15-21. Web.
Lapid, M. I., Clarke, B. L., & Wright, R. S. (2019). Institutional review boards: What clinician-researchers need to know. In Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Vol. 94, No. 3, pp. 515-525). Elsevier. Web.
Largent, E. A., & Lynch, H. F. (2017). Paying research participants: The outsized influence of “undue influence.” IRB, 39(4), 1. Web.
National Institute of Health (US). (2008). Protecting human research participants. National Institute of Health. Web.
Santelli, J., Haerizadeh, S., McGovern, T., & Unicef. (2017). Inclusion with protection: Obtaining informed consent when researching with adolescents. Web.