[ogennadi]

"Doctors are told to weigh the benefits vs. costs of every treatment. So what are the benefits and costs of IRBs?

"Whitney can find five people who unexpectedly died from research in the past twenty-five years. ...

"What are the costs? ...the monetary costs are around the order of $1.6 billion.

"What about non-monetary costs? ... Low confidence estimate, but somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 Americans probably die each year from IRB-related research delays.

"So the cost-benefit calculation looks like - save a tiny handful of people per year, while killing 10,000 to 100,000 more, for a price tag of $1.6 billion. If this were a medication, I would not prescribe it."