The IRB has updated its policy 7.11, Risk/Benefit Analysis. Like many of the policy changes we’ve posted about recently, many of the updates relate to formatting and editing to improve readability. This policy, in particular, we think really benefited from this update, given the importance of the material it addresses (and the fact that the previous version was a big blog of text that made our eyes bleed, but we digress). (OK, it actually still contains a lot of text, but now the blobs are broken up by the occasional bit of white space and stuff like that.)
We strongly encourage everyone, in particular our principal investigators and our IRB reviewers, to read this policy. The IRB is required to determine that the risk/benefit ratio of study proposals is acceptable before it approves research. This policy describes some of the considerations related to making that determination.