Theoretical Shortcomings of Institutional Review Boards and Possible Solutions

An Institutional Review Board (IRB) is an organized group formally designated to review and monitor research involving human subjects. IRB has the authority to approve, require modifications in, or disapprove a research project. IRB performs careful inspection over the conduction of research projects involving human subjects to ensure they are scientific, ethical, and regulatory. IRBs were developed after scandals with research abuse earlier in the twentieth century. Originally, IRBs were committees at academic institutions and medical facilities to monitor research studies involving human subjects, primarily to avoid ethical problems. There is no doubt that IRBs have provided major ethical improvement in performance of research activities and respect for the research participants, however, there are still important unmet needs where IRBs could be modified to meet them. The objective of this paper is to scrutinize some of the unmet needs of the IRB.