Federal officials are delaying changes to the policy that governs medical research on human subjects, just days before the changes were set to go into effect.
The changes to what’s known as the Common Rule — a federal policy that lays out the requirements for running research that involves human subjects — were supposed to be implemented starting on Jan. 19. But this week, the Department of Health and Human Services and 15 other agencies announced that the new policy would be delayed by six months to give the scientific community more time to prepare and to give the agencies more time to seek input from research institutions.
The new policy would revise certain parts of the Common Rule, first established in 1981. The new rule would require researchers to tack a summary of their study and key information at the top of consent forms to make sure that potential participants make an informed decision about enrollment, and in many cases, the new rule also mandates that those forms are posted on a public, federal website.
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