EurekAlert! News by Subject: Policy & Ethics - News by Subject: Policy & Ethics

Policy & Ethics

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 20-Dec-2025 08:11 ET (20-Dec-2025 13:11 GMT/UTC)

Accelerated cancer drug approvals deliver limited survival gains at high cost

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

FDA’s accelerated pathway allows new drugs to enter the market based on interim measures rather than waiting for long-term results like overall survival. Pharmaceutical companies are required to run follow-up studies after initial approval to confirm the benefits, but these studies are not always completed. From 1992 to 2020, nearly half of the drugs approved through this pathway were still missing these follow-up studies.

Journal: BMJ Medicine

AMS Science Preview: Volcanic rain, dust storms, and unstable Antarctic air

American Meteorological Society
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Early online research published in journals of the American Meteorological Society highlights topics including a change in airflow over the Antarctic Peninsula, rural heat, hot and dry extremes in India, a major upgrade to the UK's Global Seasonal forecasting system (GloSea6), and an unusual trigger of volcanic rain.

Real estate investment trust (REIT) acquisition associated with hospital closure and bankruptcy

University of Chicago Medical Center
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study is among the first to examine what actually happens after hospitals sell their real estate to REITs, finding no immediate improvements or harms to hospitals’ finances or quality but revealing that hospitals acquired by REITs were substantially more likely to close or file for bankruptcy.

Journal: The BMJ

New study points out school leadership plays a vital role in digital equity

ECNU Review of Education
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Although laptops and tablets have flooded into schools over the past decade, a new study published online on March 1, 2024, in ECNU Review of Education warns that the real “digital divide” has not disappeared but has become more hidden. The study points out that in the “post-digital era,” digital inequality has shifted from a lack of hardware to how technology is used, and school leaders play a critical role in this.

Journal: ECNU Review of Education

Hospitals acquired by real estate investment trusts associated with greater risk of bankruptcy, closure

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Real estate investment trust (REIT)-acquired U.S. hospitals were associated with a greater risk of bankruptcy or closure than non-REIT-acquired hospitals, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The findings also showed that REIT acquisition of hospitals had no significant impact on quality of care or clinical outcomes.

Journal: The BMJ
Funder: the Rx Foundation, NIH/National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), Harvard Catalyst, Harvard University

‘Personality test’ shows how AI chatbots mimic human traits – and how they can be manipulated

University of Cambridge
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers have developed the first scientifically validated ‘personality test’ framework for popular AI chatbots, and have shown that chatbots not only mimic human personality traits, but their ‘personality’ can be reliably tested and precisely shaped – raising implications for AI safety and ethics.

Journal: Nature Machine Intelligence

HKUMed leads new Lancet Commission with global experts to accelerate the transformation of primary health care in the post-COVID era

The University of Hong Kong
Meeting Announcement

The LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) convened the first in-person meeting of the recently launched Lancet Commission on Transforming Primary Health Care (PHC) in the Post-COVID-19 Era in mid-November 2025. The event brought together leading researchers and international experts in PHC sciences, health policy, family medicine, nursing and public health from all seven continents with a balanced representation of gender and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to chart a bold agenda for rebuilding equitable, people-centred and digitally enabled PHC systems worldwide. HKUMed will host a series of ongoing expert discussions and aims to publish the Commission’s landmark paper within the next year.

1
2
3
4