Before Karen Maschke boarded a plane for Haiti several years ago, she received several routine vaccinations for whooping cough, tetanus and hepatitis B from a local medical school clinic. Maschke, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center in Garrison, New York, who edits the journal IRB: Ethics & Human Research, obtained the shots with the comfort of knowing that if something went wrong she would be eligible for compensation under the US National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. But she worried about the estimated 2 million Americans participating in clinical trials each year who receive much riskier, experimental treatments. For these people, Maschke notes, anyone “who feels she has been harmed has few recourses.”  … Read more