6/24/11: Personal Identifiers on Laboratory Specimens Cause Problem
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently determined that a research project conducted by UCSD’s Antiviral Research Center violated the privacy and confidentiality rights of an unspecified number of human research subjects taking part in an HIV infection study. The government’s investigation of a research subject’s privacy complaint revealed that the use of names and birthdates on lab specimens, common during the study, had violated federal laws. The practice also circumvented a confidentiality rule mandated by the university’s own institutional review board, which is supposed to monitor research projects involving human subjects.
For more details, see http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2011/jun/01/radar-HIV-UCSD-privacy/.