Ethical Issues in Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine Research

Biomedical researchers are faced with increasing institutional, state, and federal regulatory requirements. New and established investigators who are attempting to translate their findings into clinical research are often ill-prepared to navigate the regulatory maze. In this chapter, we use a case-based approach to review some of the current “hot topic” areas in the regulatory oversight of research. These hot topics include (1) unanticipated problems involving risks to subjects or others, (2) incidental findings encountered during research studies, (3) enrollment of students as research subjects, and (4) research in decisionally impaired subjects. New technologies and the ever-growing entrepreneurship of research will continue to bring new challenges for the ethical conduct of research.