Human Subjects Research: An Insider's View

by Harry C. S. Wingfield

We all take medicines and get vaccines. Where do these come from? How do they get approved? Why does it take so long to get new medicines?

There are many claims made about:
• Treatments that are coming soon
• Treatments that need to be made available now
• Which treatments work best

Harry C. S. Wingfield, with extensive experience in research as a participant, a research team member, and a research oversight administrator, tells about research on drugs, research to evaluate trends in medical care, research to collect opinions, and any other research that involves human subjects.

What is “human subjects research?” The short answer is “research that involves people.”

In this book, you will learn:
• The kinds of human subjects research
• What it is like to take part in a research study
• Why research participants should be involved in developing research that helps them
• Why research is done
• How research projects are selected
• How research participants are protected from harm
• Whether you should take part in a research study
• How to interpret research study results you see in advertisements and on the news

Human Subjects Research: An Insider’s View, provides the author’s experience with research that has led to major improvements in medical care, including the study that saved his life. It also reveals flaws in the way research is conducted, including some flaws that risked his health. These flaws include the motivation for doing the research, the lack of training for many research team members, and research recruitment methods that bypassed the need to make sure the participants knew what they were signing up for.

Harry C. S. Wingfield’s book, Human Subjects Research, An Insider’s View, helps to identify areas where improvements are needed, and how these improvements can be made. He presents his information in clear language that people with no research experience can read and understand.

If you want to know more about the inner workings of the research process, buy Human Subjects Research: An Insider’s View.

154 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 20, 2020

About the author

Harry C. S. Wingfield has a unique view of Human Subjects Research (Research on People). He has been a research participant, a research participant advocate and activist for AIDS research at the national level, worked in a research clinic, and was a senior staff member for three Institutional Review Boards, the committees that approve and oversee Human Subjects Research. He holds an ABJ (BA in Journalism) from the University of Georgia, where he graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. He also holds an MFA in theatrical design from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Closets: A Memoir with Music, which tells his story of coming out as gay in the 1970s, struggling with addiction and alcoholism, becoming a gay rights activist, singing at Gay Pride rallies all over the country, and surviving AIDS. He has also written two plays: Open Discussion, a musical set in a Texas LGBTQ Alcoholics Anonymous group, and Gratia Plena, a ten-minute play about AIDS survivor guilt. He is currently retired and lives in Davenport, Florida near Walt Disney World.