Medical doctor and PhD candidate at University College London, Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, is dedicated to the study of HIV drug resistant viruses and seeks to better understand the mechanisms of drug resistance. When she did the research in Africa, she found that there are so much we need to do to protect participants who are in HIV research.

In Titanji’s TED Talk, she mentions a story about a HIV research participant and how this gave her ideas to think about what we need to protect participants’ rights and how it is important that we should talk about ethical riddles in HIV research. Titanji also brought up four areas that need to be improved in the clinical trial in developing countries to protect participants and to be more ethically acceptable.

The first point is informed consent which means participants must be given relevant information. The second area is the standard of care provided by any clinical trials. After the research ends, they should take responsibility for their participants. What happens to participants once the clinical trial is completed needs to be decided before the clinical trial. Thirdly, local governments should pay more attention to the ethical review of research even before the trial has started. And the final point is that all clinical trials should have clear plans about what happens to all the participants when research is completed.

-Caiqing Jin(Kelly)
Source: TED Talks