Publications by authors named "Robert Steel"

Individuals do not have a right to participate in clinical trials. But, they do have a right against being denied participation for inappropriate reasons. Despite the widespread endorsement of these two claims, there has been little discussion regarding which conditions for participation in clinical trials are appropriate and which are inappropriate.

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Existing calls to implement learning health care systems have tended to stipulate a minimal or near-minimal risk limit for compulsory learning activities. I argue to the contrary that such a limit cannot be defended. So long as the way in which patients are compelled to participate in learning activities is solely through the withholding of nonresearch options for receiving care, compelling participation does not violate any individual's rights and can be both efficient and adequately fair.

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Alan Wertheimer has argued persuasively that research ethics committees should be willing to count payment as a benefit when evaluating studies' risk-benefit ratios. In this paper, I begin by first recapitulating his argument and adding my own, complementary one. I then do two further things.

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To counter the pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), some have proposed accelerating SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development through controlled human infection (or 'challenge') trials. These trials would involve the deliberate exposure of relatively few young, healthy volunteers to SARS-CoV-2. We defend this proposal against the charge that there is still too much uncertainty surrounding the risks of COVID-19 to responsibly run such a trial.

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Modern antiretroviral therapies (ART) are capable of suppressing HIV in the bloodstream to undetectable levels. Nonetheless, people living with HIV must maintain lifelong adherence to ART to avoid the re-emergence of the infection. So despite the existence and efficacy of ART, there is still substantial interest in development of a cure.

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The purpose of this research was to develop a multidimensional measure of job market perceptions based on a meta-analysis. Item sets were developed to operationally define the dimensions and were tested among 3 samples. Results of a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in 3 samples indicated that the 5 scales have satisfactory psychometric properties, construct, and criterion-related validity.

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