Alex J O H N London

Carnegie Mellon University, Philosophy, Faculty Member

Followers

Following

Co-authors

Public Views

Alex John London is the Clara L. West Professor of Ethics & Philosophy and Director of The Center for Ethics and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Professor London is an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center and recipient of the Elliott Dunlap Smith Award for Distinguished Teaching and Educational Service in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) and a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Professor London's research focuses on foundational ethical issues in human-subjects research, issues of social justice in the trans-national context, and on methodological issues in theoretical and applied ethics. His papers have appeared in Mind, Science, The Lancet, PLoS Medicine, Statistics In Medicine, The Hastings Center Report, and numerous other journals and collections. He is co-editor of Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, one of the most widely used textbooks in medical ethics.

In 2016 Professor London was appointed to the U.S. National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) Committee on Clinical Trials During the 2014-2015 Ebola Outbreak. From 2012-2016 he served on the Working Group on the Revision of the CIOMS 2002 International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects and in 2011 he was appointed to the Steering Committee on Forensic Science Programs for the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Since 2007 he has served as a member of the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network. He has testified before the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and has been commissioned to write papers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM). He has served as an ethics expert in consultations with numerous national and international organizations including U.S. National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, the World Medical Association, and the World Bank.

Professor London is an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Bioethics and Health Law at the University of Pittsburgh and was previously a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard University Program in Ethics and Health. Before joining Carnegie Mellon in 2000, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics and he received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Virginia.

less

Daniel D. Hutto

University of Wollongong

Galen Strawson

The University of Texas at Austin

Samia Hurst

Université de Genève

John Tasioulas

University of Oxford

Shaun Gallagher

University of Memphis

Roe Fremstedal

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Kyla Ebels-Duggan

Northwestern University

Maxwell J Smith

University of Western Ontario

Philip C Hébert

University of Toronto

InterestsView All (7)

Uploads

Papers by Alex J O H N London

Linguistic and Cultural Challenges in Communication and Translation in US-Sponsored HIV Prevention Research in Emerging Economies

PLOS ONE, 2015

Linguistic and cultural differences can impede comprehension among potential research participant... more Linguistic and cultural differences can impede comprehension among potential research participants during the informed consent process, but how researchers and IRBs respond to these challenges in practice is unclear. We conducted in-depth interviews with 15 researchers, research ethics committee (REC) chairs and members from 8 different countries with emerging economies, involved in HIV-related research sponsored by HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), regarding the ethical and regulatory challenges they face in this regard. In the interviews, problems with translating study materials often arose as major concerns. Four sets of challenges were identified concerning linguistic and cultural translations of informed consent documents and other study materials, related to the: (1) context, (2) process, (3) content and (4) translation of these documents. Host country contextual issues included low literacy rates, education (e.g., documents may need to be written below 5 th grade reading level), and experiences with research, and different views of written documentation. Certain terms and concepts may not exist in other languages, or have additional connotations that back translations do not always reveal. Challenges arise because of not only the content of word-for-word, literal translation, but the linguistic form of the language, such as tone (e.g., appropriate forms of politeness vs. legalese, seen as harsh), syntax, manner of questions posed, and the concept of the consent); and the contexts of use affect meaning. Problems also emerged in bilateral communications-US IRBs may misunderstand local practices, or communicate insufficiently the reasons for their decisions to foreign RECs. In sum, these data highlight several challenges that have received little, if any, attention in past literature on translation of informed consent and study materials, and have crucial implications for improving practice, education, research and policy, suggesting

Alex J O H N London

Uploads

Papers by Alex J O H N London

Log In