The Medical Research Council is a publicly-funded organisation dedicated to improving human health. It supports research across the entire spectrum of medical sciences, in universities and hospitals, in its own units and institutes in the UK and in Africa. The MRC works closely with key stakeholders and research funders - UK health departments, other departments and agencies, the six sister research councils, industry, and the academic and charity sectors - giving a high priority to research that is likely to make a real difference to clinical practice and the health of the population. This annual report describes progress in 2008-09, highlights key awards and partnerships, and outlines plans for the future.
High-quality evidence is the foundation for effective treatment in medicine. As the vast amount of published medical evidence continues to grow, concerns about the quality of many studies are increasing. Evidence in Medicine is a much-needed resource that addresses the ‘medical misinformation mess’ by assessing the flaws in the research environment. This authoritative text identifies and summarises the many factors that have produced the current problems in medical research, including bias in randomised controlled trials, questionable research practices, falsified data, manipulated findings, and more. This volume brings together the findings from meta-research studies and systematic reviews to explore the quality of clinical trials and other medical research, explaining the character and consequences of poor-quality medical evidence using clear language and a wealth of supporting references. The text suggests planning strategies to transform the research process and provides an extensive list of the actions that could be taken by researchers, regulators, and other key stakeholders to address defects in medical evidence. This timely volume: Enables readers to select reliable studies and recognise misleading research Highlights the main types of biased and wasted studies Discusses how incentives in the research environment influence the quality of evidence Identifies the problems researchers need to guard against in their work Describes the scale of poor-quality research and explores why the problems are widespread Includes a summary of key findings on poor-quality research and a listing of proposed initiatives to improve research evidence Contains extensive citations to references, reviews, commentaries, and landmark studies Evidence in Medicine is required reading for all researchers who create evidence, funders and publishers of medical research, students who conduct their own research studies, and healthcare practitioners wanting to deliver high-quality, evidence-based care.
Scores of talented and dedicated people serve the forensic science community, performing vitally important work. However, they are often constrained by lack of adequate resources, sound policies, and national support. It is clear that change and advancements, both systematic and scientific, are needed in a number of forensic science disciplines to ensure the reliability of work, establish enforceable standards, and promote best practices with consistent application. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward provides a detailed plan for addressing these needs and suggests the creation of a new government entity, the National Institute of Forensic Science, to establish and enforce standards within the forensic science community. The benefits of improving and regulating the forensic science disciplines are clear: assisting law enforcement officials, enhancing homeland security, and reducing the risk of wrongful conviction and exoneration. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States gives a full account of what is needed to advance the forensic science disciplines, including upgrading of systems and organizational structures, better training, widespread adoption of uniform and enforceable best practices, and mandatory certification and accreditation programs. While this book provides an essential call-to-action for congress and policy makers, it also serves as a vital tool for law enforcement agencies, criminal prosecutors and attorneys, and forensic science educators.
This book offers easy access to the everyday ethics problems that occur in the medical care of children. It contains practical guidance on how physicians and other healthcare practitioners may manage both straightforward and complex ethics problems. The book provides a readable and comprehensive introduction to ethics issues for beginners and is also extremely valuable to experienced practitioners.This work covers important "classical" ethical issues such as privacy, confidentiality, truth telling, and discusses the elements of the relationships that might exist between parents and healthcare providers. However, the book also provides a resource for new and emerging areas of bioethics. These include issues arising in the new population of children who are beginning to survive the neonatal and infant periods with a multitude of problems – “children with medical complexity". Finally, it also includes a section on the advantages and pitfalls of social media use.
With devastating logic and clarity, Dr Pandora Pound, Research Director at Safer Medicines Trust, comprehensively dismantles the case for animal research, bringing to an end the 150-year-old debate about its value once and for all.
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Covers the laws surrounding commercial transactions that involve the development, use of commercialisation of technology and associate intellectual property rights. Types of transactions that fall within this category are research and development contracts and intellectual property licences and these form the main focus of the book. Written by experts and describing the many different areas of law that affect technology agreements such as IP, contract law, competition law and tax, this is the leading guide to this complex area of law. The new Fourth Edition has been brought completely up to date including: - Coverage of EU Horizon 2020 replacing Framework 7 funding scheme - General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - Updates in line with the Charities Act 2011 - New section on different types of standard agreements available (Lambert, NIHR, EU consortium agreements) - New material dealing with variety of relevant patent legislation: Unitary Patent and Unified Patents Court, the Intellectual Property Act 2014, Legislative Reform (Patents) Order 2014, Patents (Supplementary Protection Certificates) Regulations) 2014 - New material on the EU Trade Secrets Directive - Coverage of Regulations No 536/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on clinical trials on medicinal products for human use, and repealing Directive 2001/20/EC - Addition of research exception (new section 22A) from freedom of information from 1 October 2014 (Freedom of Information Act 2014) - Coverage of Technology Transfer Regulation, 316/2014 and related guidelines