Determining what constitutes an anticipatable incidental finding (IF) from clinical research and defining whether, and when, this IF should be returned to the participant have been topics of discussion in the field of human subject... more
Determining what constitutes an anticipatable incidental finding (IF) from clinical research and defining whether, and when, this IF should be returned to the participant have been topics of discussion in the field of human subject protections for the last 10 years. It has been debated that implementing a comprehensive IF-approach that addresses both the responsibility of researchers to return IFs and the expectation of participants to receive them can be logistically challenging. IFs have been debated at different levels, such as the ethical reasoning for considering their disclosure or the need for planning for them during the development of the research study. Some authors have discussed the methods for re-contacting participants for disclosing IFs, as well as the relevance of considering the clinical importance of the IFs. Similarly, other authors have debated about when IFs should be disclosed to participants. However, no author has addressed how the "actionability" o...
