June 14, 2006

Polyheme Blood Study: The Chronicle Hosts an Online Discussion

Well I sure hope that The Chronicle of Higher Education has better luck soliciting discussion about the future of the Polyheme artificial blood product trial than I have had so far. In the conversation that AJOB hosted, to which every single PI of every single Polyheme site was invited, only one PI from one site that was not suspending the study showed up for the call - despite the fact that it was billed as an opportunity to think about how to move forward responsibly with community consultation.

And to the best of my knowledge, ours (Albany Med) is the only institution in the entire PolyHeme study to have conducted any effectiveness analysis of our community consultation, an effort that was of as best I can tell of no interest whatsoever to those who have continued the trial in the face of current uncertainties.

Polyheme and ethical issues in emergency research are the subject of the current issue of The American Journal of BIoethics and of a major research effort at AMBI on community consultation for emergency research utilizing Polyheme as a test case. So we'll be there.

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