The Contribution of Ethics Review to Protection of Human Participants: Comment on “Measuring the Quality and Performance of Institutional Review Boards”

Measuring the quality and performance of IRBs requires clarity about what IRBs are supposed to do. Although many agree that IRBs are supposed to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects, exactly how review by an IRB contributes to protection is not always clear. Originally, ethics review was instituted as a way to check the interests, possible conflicts, and enthusiasm of investigators whose relationship to participants is different from physicians’ relationship to patients. IRB performance might include evaluating how well IRBs do this