Research Ethics Committees

Abstract

Ethics committees represent a “way of doing bioethics” that is useful in plural and democratic societies. Although there are different types of ethics committees, clinical ethics committees, national ethics committees or ad hoc committees, I will focus my analysis on research ethics committees in biomedicine. I will examine their international legal framework in order to define them, identify their functions and analyse their possible instrumentalisation. Lastly, I will provide some practical information as a member of two research ethics committees in Spain, the Bioethics Committee at the University of Barcelona and the Research Ethics Committee at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, to draw some conclusions and make proposals.