| Volume 8 Number 2 |
|
Winter/Spring 1998 |
Council wishes to express its gratitude for their contribution to Dr. John Duff and Dr. Peter Walker, whose mandate ended in December 1997. The National Council is also pleased to announce that Professor Thérèse Leroux, an NCEHR Council Member, was chosen President-elect at the 1997–1998 elections of the Canadian Bioethics Society (CBS). Charles Weijer, the Chair of the NCEHR Ethics of Research Design Committee, was elected as a member of the CBS Executive Committee and Mr. Pierre Deschamps, a member of the NCEHR Evaluation Committee, was appointed as a CBS Advisory Council Member—Eastern Region. The National Council is proud to announce that Abbyann Day Lynch was invested a member of the Order of Canada for her contribution to the field of Health Care. The citation mentions her role as a founding member of the Canadian Bioethics Society and the National Council on Bioethics in Human Research among the reasons for awarding her this distinction. In March of this year, NCEHR held a Retreat in order to study some of the complex ethical issues that are typical of the variety of methods and objectives in social sciences and humanities. More precisely, leading researchers were invited to discuss ethical issues in research in the following fields: psychology, education, anthropology, history, management/administration. Communiqué will report on this Retreat in its next issue.
by Professor Marcel J. Mélançon, Department of Philosophy, Collège de Chicoutimi; Member of NCEHR Evaluation Committee A commemorative world conference (1947–1997)
The Nuremberg Code of Ethics The Code, developed in response to the abuses perpetrated by Nazi doctors, particularly during World War II, established ethical guidelines for human research and experimentation. Revised several times, the Code serves as a basis for most Western codes of ethics, establishing standards to maintain respect for human subjects in biomedical research. The reports of Canadian funding agencies, in particular the recent report issued by the three Councils (MRC, SSHRC, NSERC) are the result of this Code of Ethics. The spirit in which the National Council on Ethics in Human Research was founded is also an extension of the Code, as are its concerns and various activities. National Council on Ethics involvement It was very important therefore for NCEHR to participate actively in the Conference, which is why Prof. M. J. Mélançon (member) and Dr. H. Dinsdale (President), submitted a proposal for a paper on the NCEHR. The German Scientific Committee selected the Canadian proposal, particularly because of the Council's innovative nature in the West: a country's major funding agencies pooled their financial and human resources to create joint guidelines on ethics affecting research in the sciences, social sciences and biomedical sciences. The National Council on Ethics was provided with a booth
(documen- tation, publications, etc.) and was given the honour of a location in the main
entrance hall at the Conference for four days. Only one other ethics council, from France,
received the same treatment. In addition to Prof. Mélançon and Dr. Dinsdale, Dr. J.
Foerster (Council member) also pitched in to answer questions from visitors, which
exceeded their expectations. |
he National Council is pleased to announce that at its last Council meeting, our
name was changed to National Council on Ethics in Human Research (NCEHR). The rationale
behind this is that the new name better reflects our expanded mandate since 1995, which
covers not only human research ethics in the medical field, but also research involving
human subjects in other fields of study such as social sciences and humanities.
The three official languages at the
Conference were German, English and French. Over 400 persons and delegates from various
countries were in attendance, and more than thirty international seminars were held as
part of the Conference. In a highly original move, the Organizing Committee invited 200
students (final-year high-school and medical students) to attend the plenary sessions in
order to build awareness on biomedical ethics.