Review of national research ethics regulations and guidelines in Middle Eastern Arab countries

Abstract

BackgroundResearch ethics guidelines are essential for conducting medical research. Recently, numerous attempts have been made to establish national clinical research documents in the countries of the Middle East. This article analyzes these documents.MethodsThirteen Arab countries in the Middle East were explored for available national codes, regulations, and guidelines concerning research ethics, and 10 documents from eight countries were found. We studied these documents, considering the ethical principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki, the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) guidelines, and the International Conference of Harmonization - Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice (ICH-GCP). Our paper comprises a complete list of protections, such as confidentiality, informed consent, ethics committees, and others.ResultsThis study found different levels and kinds of research ethics regulations and guidelines in the countries examined. Two groups can be distinguished: the countries in the first group have one or more research ethics regulations or guidelines, while the countries in the second group have not yet established any. Most of the documents showed various degrees of deficiencies in regard to ethical protection. The majority of the documents that were examined refer to one or more international documents on biomedical research ethics.ConclusionsRecently, a lot of efforts have been made in many countries in the Middle East. However, compared with international documents, most of the research ethics documents in use in this region demonstrate numerous deficiencies. As it relates to these documents, extensive differences could be observed in regard to development, structure, content, and reference to international guidelines.

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Promoting an academic culture in the Arab world

“…Ethical regulations in many Arab institutions are deficient in many aspects, particularly in relation to development, structure, content, and reference to international ethical guidelines. [17] Despite obvious defects of citation practices, [18] some Arab institutions spend a lot of money to lure "highly cited authors" or to coaffiliate their published papers with institutions abroad to appear with more "prestige" or "excellence" in biased ranking systems such as the Shanghai ranking [19,20] or alike. It is, however, not a question of citations but the utility of manuscripts in real life to bring concrete solutions to health, technical, or environmental challenges.…”

Medical Liability for Trafficking in Persons for the Purpose of Human Experimentation: International Standards and Comparative Models from Arab Jurisdictions

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“…60 It must be proven that the research is intended to obtain knowledge that will lead to improved diagnosis, prevention or See Qatar policies where it is noted that Arab laws and policies do not pay attention to the involvement of vulnerable groups in research. See also Alahmad et al (2012). treatment of diseases or other health problems characteristics of or unique to the vulnerable classes.…”