Clarkson University and Union Graduate College professor Michelle Meyer recently published an essay in Forbes on the proposed changes to federal regulations governing research with biospecimens and how it affects information privacy.

Her essay "No, Donating Your Leftover Tissue to Research Is Not Like Letting Someone Rifle Through Your Phone," in response to a New York Times op-ed by Rebecca Skloot.

Meyer said Skloot's op-ed focuses on the most controversial proposed change, which would ask patients for the first time to decide whether to allow their non-identified tissue leftover from clinical tests to be used in research or thrown away.

She said Skloot frames her op-ed with a highly misleading analogy that threatens to misinform the public about biospecimens research, painting it as riskier in terms of information privacy and less beneficial than it is.

Meyer is an assistant professor of bioethics and the director of Bioethics Policy at Clarkson-Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Bioethics Program.