ABSTRACT
In 1996, the federal government finalized regulations that permit certain types of emergency research without obtaining prospective informed consent from participants or their surrogates (U.S. Food and Drug Administration 1996), Holloway's article, "Accidental Communities: Race, Emergency Medicine, and the Problem of PolyHeme R ," focuses on a problematic aspect of these regulations, namely the requirements for community consultation and public disclosure (Holloway 2006). Her unfavorable appraisal of community consultation appears to be a vehicle for a more general indictment of the notion of "community" as currently used by institutionalized medicine and medical research. Although this criticism may be justified, Holloway's arguments are not persuasive and her chosen exemplars seem ill-considered. There is nothing paradoxical about Satcher's (2001) description of the diverse and complex nature of real communities, and it is disingenuous for anyone familiar with her writings to accuse Lillie-Blanton et al. (2001) of biased cultural notions. Specifically, however, we wish to take issue with Holloway's assertion that, within the discipline of emergency research, community is being used as a "troubling displacement for individual autonomy" (Holloway 2006, 7).
