Ethics Consultation

Georgia CTSA & Winship Cancer Institute Offer Collaborative Research Ethics Consultation Service

Ethical dilemmas can arise in research as well as in clinical care. The Georgia CTSA Regulatory Knowledge and Support (RKS) group and Winship Cancer Institute offer a research ethics consultation service to help researchers including faculty, staff, and students at Emory, MSM, UGA, and Georgia Tech. We handle cases at all stages of research including protocol design, informed consent, dilemmas that arise during research, and publication issues. Examples of past issues include the appropriateness of using healthy persons first in human research, how to phrase consent language to explain how cost to the patient should be explained, whether and how to return incidental findings, dilemmas in international research, and help with responding to grant reviewers who raise ethical concerns. If the concern is particularly vexing, the consulting team can discuss the case with the National Research Ethics Collaborative which includes research ethicists from around the country.

The Georgia CTSA and Winship Research ethics consultation service include five ethicists on its panel: Rebecca D. Pentz, Ph.D., professor, Research Ethics in Hematology/Oncology, Emory School of Medicine; Neal Dickert, MD, Ph.D., assistant professor and senior physician, Emory School of Medicine; John Banja, Ph.D., professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, medical ethicist, Emory Center for Ethics; Gerard Vong, Ph.D., assistant professor, Emory School of Medicine and director, Master of Arts in Bioethics Program; and Justin Biddle, Ph.D., associate professor, School of Public Policy, Georgia Tech.

If you have a research ethics question or are pondering a research ethics dilemma, confidential discussions and non-binding advice are available by emailing: