The ethical case for placebo control in HIV-cure-related studies with ART interruption

Monica Magalhaes; Daniel R Kuritzkes; Nir Eyal

doi:10.1016/j.jve.2022.100084

The ethical case for placebo control in HIV-cure-related studies with ART interruption

J Virus Erad. 2022 Aug 28;8(3):100084. doi: 10.1016/j.jve.2022.100084. eCollection 2022 Sep.

Authors

Monica Magalhaes¹, Daniel R Kuritzkes^{2

3}, Nir Eyal^{1

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Population-Level Bioethics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
² Division of Infectious Diseases, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
³ Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
⁴ Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
⁵ Department of Health Behavior, Society, and Policy, Rutgers School of Public Health, Piscataway, NJ, USA.

Abstract

Many studies that seek to cure HIV must ask participants to interrupt their antiretroviral treatment. In such circumstances, is it permissible to include a placebo group in the study? We explain why doing so is a scientific and an ethical necessity, and more benign than imagined.

Keywords: Analytic treatment interruption; HIV Cure-related studies; Human subjects research; Placebos; Research ethics.