An article claiming that anal swabs can be used to detect SARS-CoV-2 in patients cured of Covid-19 has been retracted after the journal found that the authors failed to get permission from the patients to conduct the study.
Like us, you may noted a trend in the retractions of health research from China: Retraction because of concerns about consent. We don’t want to discount that concern. Consent is a vital component of ethical research. But cases like this raise an important question: Should we apply Western notions of consent to research in China?
You may recall that in January the Chinese government in January launched a program to implement widespread anal swabbing to look for SARS-CoV-2 — a plan that, as the Washington Post reported, did not meet with cheers from the local population.
