Established by Congress in the 1974 National Research Act, institutional review boards (IRBs) are decentralized committees that review and monitor nearly all federally funded research projects involving human subjects in the United States. In most...

An institutional review board/independent ethics committee (IRB/IEC) (also known as ethical review board) is a group that has been formally designated to approve, monitor, and review biomedical and behavioral research involving humans with the alleged...

The first major overhaul in the design of institutional review boards since they came into being in the 1970s could be on the horizon. There's been a steadily increasing hum of concern about IRBs in Washington. In 1995, a presidential advisory committee questioned...

The watchdogs of research have had a massive increase in responsibility, but lack the support to do their job The pressure is building on Institutional Review Boards. Those venerable groups are charged with protecting patients in clinical trials, largely by providing ethical oversight...

Activists are demanding an investigation into treatment performed on a severely brain-damaged girl whose growth was deliberately stunted to make it easier for her parents to care for her at home.Critics want an official condemnation from the American Medical Association, which owns a medical journal...

A Los Angeles-area doctor who lent his name to a type of stomach-shrinking surgery failed to obtain the full informed consent of 175 patients implanted with an experimental medical device, according to a federal warning letter released Tuesday.Dr. Mathias A.L. Fobi also implanted 185 patients...