Tiny HHS office tasked with protecting research participants’ safety is running on fumes

In 2021, the federal office charged with ensuring that the vast research enterprise bankrolled by the Department of Health and Human Services keeps study participants safe, received a report of a death by suicide involving a person enrolled in a study testing a treatment for depression and reduced mobility.&#x A0; Once the Office of Human Research Protections started looking into the death at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, it found problems that spread far beyond that one study, including failures in how the institute’s ethics board reviews proposed research. “We saw, holy smokes, this whole institution has issues,” said Lisa Buchanan, then director of the OHRP’s compliance division. The investigation became all-consuming. “It was probably 60-70% of our time,” she said.Read the rest…