Function and duties of an ethics committee at a university faculty of medicine: 13 years of personal experience.
The sad history of experimentation with human subjects by physicians in this century demonstrates the need for an international code of medical ethics which must be recognised by all physicians performing research on human subjects. In order to realise this goal, ethics committees, i.e. committees for the protection of human subjects, are absolutely necessary. Regulations are also needed which make obligatory the submission of every research protocol involving human subjects to an ethics committee. The educational impact of such regulations upon medical students and physicians, and the advantage for patients and volunteers is immense and outweighs the time and workload involved.
Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany.
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Creutzfeldt
D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004341:Drug Evaluation; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D017041:Ethics Committees; D005180:Faculty, Medical; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans