Short Communication: Combining Ethics With Efficiency-Israel Defense Forces Experience in Clinical Trials During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic.

Muginshtein-Simkovitch, Evgenia; Kayouf, Raeed; Twig, Gilad; Ketko, Itay; Bader, Tarif; Fink, Noam

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, first reported in China, soon spread worldwide, has evolved into one of the most complex global public health crises the world has encountered in the last several decades. Conducting military medical research is vital to study the unique influences of military service conditions on soldiers' health and to improve the medical response in various emergency periods. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Medical Corps maintains an Institutional Review Board (IRB) which reviews clinical studies conducted within the IDF. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the IRB of the IDF had to rapidly implement procedural modifications in order to comply with expanding urgent demands for research without compromising ethical standards. The ethical dilemmas and the IDF policy and perspective are outlined in this article.