Analogous to

clinical ethics Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. Medical ethics is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. T ...

consultation, Research Ethics Consultation (REC) describes a formal way for researchers to solicit and receive expert ethical guidance related to

biomedical research Medical research (or biomedical research), also known as health research, refers to the process of using scientific methods with the aim to produce knowledge about human diseases, the prevention and treatment of illness, and the promotion of ...

. The first REC service was established at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

(NIH) Clinical Center in 1997. Today, most REC services are found at academic institutions, and the majority of current services were originally launched in response to the 2006 NIH

Clinical and Translational Science Award Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) is a type of U.S. federal grant administered by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health. The CTSA program began in October 2006 under the au ...

program, as applicants to that program were required to have procedures in place to address ethical concerns raised by their research. While still a young discipline with no explicit standards, individuals serving as

research ethics Research ethics is a discipline within the study of Ethics, applied ethics. Its scope ranges from general scientific integrity and scientific misconduct, misconduct to the treatment of human and animal subjects. The social responsibilities of sc ...

consultants are expected to be familiar with

and ethical analysis; knowledgeable about the applicable regulations, laws, and policies; and ideally also have some

experience and scientific expertise. REC is distinct from related services, such as those of

Institutional Review Boards An institutional review board (IRB), also known as an independent ethics committee (IEC), ethical review board (ERB), or research ethics board (REB), is a committee at an institution that applies research ethics by reviewing the methods proposed ...

, in that it is typically available at any point during a study (planning, conducting, interpreting, or disseminating results), and can relate to any ethical question. While little is known about the range and distribution of topics put forth for REC, such services may be particularly important and useful for studies of known regulatory and ethical uncertainty (e.g. assessment of minimal risk in pediatric studies) and frontier research for which there is little if any regulation or expert consensus.{{cite journal, last=Havard, first=M, author2=Cho MK , author3=Magnus D , title=Triggers for research ethics consultation, journal= Sci Transl Med, date=25 Jan 2012, volume=4, issue=118, pmid=22277965, doi=10.1126/scitranslmed.3002734, pages=118cm1, doi-access=free The recommendations that result from the consultation are non-binding, meaning that the researcher may choose to follow the recommendation, or to pursue a different approach.

References

Research ethics Consulting

See also

References