Ethics committee

An ethics committee in the European Union is a body responsible for oversight of medical or human research studies in EU member states.

Since 1977 for the purposes of its subsidies to university research the Government of Canada, under the GOSA Act in the person (since 2015) of its Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, donates annually to several of the federal funder agencies; these in turn disburse the funds into person-sized chunks.

[3][4][5] These persons typically are university professors, who are selected according to success in the wielding of soft power as measured by track record.

Point five of the Nuremberg Code requires that no experiment should be conducted that is dangerous to the subjects unless the experimenters themselves also take part.

[10] Another ethical principle is that volunteers must stand to gain some benefit from the research, even if that is only a remote future possibility of treatment being found for a disease that they only have a small chance of contracting.

First published in 1993, the CIOMS guidelines have no legal force but they have been influential in the drafting of national regulations for ethics committees.

[17] Ethics committees have been criticized of inconsistency,[18] over-regulation,[19] lack of accountability,[20] prioritizing institutional reputation over academic freedom,[21] and reducing innovation.