Abstract
As a medical student, I was taught that thrombolytics should not be used to treat stroke. Thrombolytics are now standard practice in acute stroke because researchers moved beyond theoretical debates to study actual outcomes. Supplementing theoretical debates with empirical research can similarly improve ethics practice and policy. Informed consent is fundamental to ethical research. Because stroke and other brain disorders can impair capacity to provide informed consent, many researchers, ethicists, and policy-makers consider surrogate consent critical.1 Clinicians will increasingly be asked by surrogate decision-makers for advice on whether and how to enroll and monitor decisionally impaired individuals in research. Research with adults unable to provide informed consent has been controversial2 ever since proposed regulations governing related research failed adoption three decades ago.1 As the federal government reassesses its approach to overseeing research with decisionally impaired adults, some fear surrogate consent may be highly restricted. How big a problem would this be? In this issue of Neurology ®, Flaherty et al.3 analyze how excluding individuals thus enrolled would …
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