Cross posted from Nature’s news blog blog on behalf of Gwyneth Dickey Zakaib.

In the wake of the 2010 discovery that U.S. government-funded scientists intentionally infected unknowing Guatemalan citizens with syphilis in the 1940s, President Obama has asked his Commission on for the Study of Bioethical Issues to take a good hard look at whether human subjects today are adequately protected in federally funded research.

At the commission’s 5th meeting on 18-19 May in the Warwick New York Hotel, an invited panel’s words rang loud and clear: the system may provide adequate protection, but it’s a mess.

“What began as a venture in confronting the misuse and abuse of research subjects has become a bureaucratized system of regulation that often misses the core of what the mission had begun to do,” says Ronald Bayer, a professor and co-chair of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City. He adds that regulation plays a crucial role, especially in light of history, but the core issues have fallen by the wayside.

Continue reading on the Nature news blog.