Should Medical School Grading Be Tiered or Pass/Fail? A Scoping Review of Conceptual Arguments and Empirical Data.

Purpose: Medical school grading has implications for student well-being, motivation, equity, and residency selection. However, despite more than 50 years of debate, there remains no consensus on whether grading should be tiered or pass/fail, particularly in core clerkships. This scoping review examines conceptual arguments, empirical data, and knowledge gaps regarding tiered versus pass/fail grading in medical school.

Ethical challenges for a new generation of early-phase pediatric gene therapy trials.

After decades of setbacks, gene therapy (GT) is experiencing major breakthroughs. Five GTs have received US regulatory approval since 2017, and over 900 others are currently in development. Many of these GTs target rare pediatric diseases that are severely life-limiting, given a lack of effective treatments.

Patient and family social media use surrounding a novel treatment for a rare genetic disease: a qualitative interview study.

Purpose: Advances in gene therapy and precision medicine have led to a growing number of novel treatments for rare genetic diseases. Patients/families may lack access to up-to-date, accurate, and relevant information about these treatments. Social media offers one potentially important resource for these communities.

Advantages of Using Lotteries to Select Participants for High-Demand Covid-19 Treatment Trials.

As hospitals have experienced a surge of Covid-19 patients, investigators of Covid-19 treatment trials face a difficult problem: when an institution has more eligible and interested patients than trial slots, who should be enrolled? Defining a clear strategy for selecting participants for "high-demand" Covid-19 treatment trials is important to avoid ad hoc and potentially biased decision-making by local investigators, which could inadvertently compromise a trial's social value, participants' interests, or fairness. In this article, we propose a set of ethical criteria for evaluating participant-selection strategies for such trials. We argue that the pandemic context-in particular, great urgency to develop safe and effective treatments, uncertainty surrounding Covid-19, and strain on the health care system that limits the time and effort available for trial enrollment-favors participant-selection strategies that optimize the ease of enrollment and, ideally, social value.