The Milbank quarterly
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The specter of pediatric AIDS fundamentally challenges elements of the liberal ideological basis of women's reproductive freedom. Many public health officials hold that preventing transmission of HIV from mother to fetus requires efforts to discourage pregnancy by infected women. For over two decades, however, genetic counselors, feminists, and medical ethicists have stressed the importance of nondirective counseling in the context of reproductive choice. The question now confronted by American society is whether it will be possible to frame an ideology of reproductive choice that recognizes the limits of liberal individualism, while preserving the basic features of reproductive freedom.
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The Milbank quarterly · Jan 1990
Clinical TrialNew rules for new drugs: the challenge of AIDS to the regulatory process.
AIDS is systematically changing attitudes and practices regarding the regulation and use of drugs. The complex framework and rigorous research protocols developed by the Food and Drug Administration prior to the 1980s to minimize risk to subjects is shifting in the epidemic's wake to maximize innovation. The FDA has adopted new procedures hastening access to investigational drugs and easing drug importation for personal use, which, in effect, transfers decisions about the benefits and risks of drugs from the agency's staff to patients and their physicians. While the FDA's tilt toward embracing consumer rights may continue in the near future, disappointing results could prompt the agency to reassert its authority in controlling drug policy more restrictively.