Alex John London’s new book, For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics highlights the fact that establishing just social arrangements is not only a matter of incentivizing popular will to act for the common good; it also requires filling in informational gaps about which policies, arrangements, and interventions will advance the basic interests of members in an equitable, effective and efficient manner. Promoting justice requires, in part, acquiring the knowledge for how to do so. In developing this point, (...) London carefully traces these missteps in the main philosophical debates and then resuscitates the importance of questions of justice at the heart of research ethics. In doing so, it provides a transformative corrective for the field. This review critically examines one of the central pillars of London’s egalitarian research imperative approach: the way in which the social value of research is closely linked with minimizing uncertainty among reasonable experts. (shrink)

Svirsky, Howard, and Berman have enumerated a variety of U.S. FDA roles, arguing that although the public possess a “right to information” about health risks,...

While providing people with the same nicotine that forms the basis of their physical addiction, there is no available evidence that electronic nicotine delivery systems have carcinogenic eff...

Svirsky, Howard, and Berman address the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ’s oversight of tobacco products, the newest major area of regulation Congress assigned to the FDA. They discus...

Svirsky, Howard, and Berman argue that the Food and Drug Administration inhabits two types of roles which must be balanced: those of bringing about beneficial material change and those...

E-cigarettes are a uniquely close substitute to combustible cigarettes. Close not just in nicotine content, but also in shape, taste and even inhalation and arm movement. Their availab...

Svirsky, Howard, and Berman’s paper “E-Cigarettes and the Multiple Responsibilities of the FDA” offers a significant contribution to a knowledge domain that might be called “harm reduction e...

The authors of the target article articulate the complicated, often conflicting demands of U.S. Food and Drug Administration roles as justification for the FDA’s delay in releasing guidelines...