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takyon writes:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has relaxed some rules that were proposed in September. The rules would have likely stopped small hospitals and clinics from donating tissue samples to researchers:

Federal officials have dropped a controversial plan to impose new rules that researchers say would have made it much harder to use patient blood and tissue samples in research. The final Common Rule released this morning omits these provisions, but leaves some other changes intact.

Biomedical and university research groups that lobbied against the biospecimens provisions are relieved. "We are very pleased at the amount of time, attention, and effort that went into reviewing the comments. The process worked," says Lizbet Boroughs, who follows biomedical research policy for the Association of American Universities in Washington, D.C.

[...] A proposed rule released in September 2015 contained some uncontroversial revisions, such as requirements for simpler informed consent forms and exemptions for low-risk studies such as some social science research. But the proposal set off alarm bells because it would have imposed new rules for research using blood, urine, tissue, and other specimens leftover from clinical care or a specific research study. Those samples can currently be used for new research without the donor's consent if they are stripped of names and other identifying information. But the proposed rule would have required written consent for broad future use of such deidentified samples. Institutions would have had to set up systems to track the consent data.

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