Islamic Body on Ethics of Science and Technology

The current development of research and medical sciences, combined with the known globalisation have led to an expansion of interaction between Western and non-Western countries. Even if this phenomenon is supposed to give rise to substantial benefit for developing countries in research and medicine, it does not discard the risk that some of the practices which are forbidden in Western countries be applied in developing countries.

This is mainly due to the fact that in Western countries, a standardisation of research techniques and medical practices, aimed to preserve subject's health and dignity were developed since the middle of the last century, which is not the case for developing countries.
Since the Second World War, many international guidelines have been established to insure that biomedical research on human subjects is conducted with respect to the baseline ethical values and rules and that dignity, rights safety and well-being of participants are promoted. On the other hand, these guidelines aim to insure that promoter and experimenters are working all together to reach this goal. Those guidelines include the Declaration of Helsinki, the CIOMS International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects, and the WHO and ICH Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice.
In those guidelines, Countries, institutions, and communities are encouraged to develop Ethical Committees and ethical review systems, and to adapt them to their socio-cultural specificities. In following the guidelines, one may expect not only to protect participants, but also to develop quality of research and medical practices. Indeed, reviewing protocols of research is an important step to prevent experimental bias and statistical errors. On the other hand, ethical committees, through multi-disciplinarity of its member, may bring some improvement of the quality of the research. The international guidelines recommend also that states should give ethical committees, administrative and financial support.
At today, many countries have created institutions in charge of ethics, even if the structures change from a country to another. The most common body is named "National Committee" or "advisory committee". In most cases, those institutions are appointed by ministries of health and are aimed to advise executive and legislative organs on ethics and bioethics. The Committees also give recommendations on current issues in bioethics and ethics of health more generally, in particular when national policies and legislation have to be developed.
In many other countries, ethical bodies were created independently from any official or governmental institution. This is currently the case of local committees or committees within hospitals or institutions, whose role is specifically dedicated to supervision of clinical trials to be conducted within the hospital, as well as to ethical dilemma raised by usual medical practices.
In any case, an ethical committee reviews research or medical practice involving prime aim to insure dignity, rights, safety, and well-being of participants, a point usually known as ‘respect for the dignity of persons’ in ethical guideline. Indeed, research in life sciences and medicine, while important for humanity, should never disrupt health, care and human well-being of participants to those research.
Another point to keep in mind is the "principle of Justice". This means that all population should benefit from the result of a research. In some case indeed, one may expect that research may explore medical tools or procedure that will benefit to only a specific community, discarding all others, due to their social belonging or to their economic level or to their geographic position. In this case, participants subjected to research are considered such as laboratory animals. In developing countries, ethical committees should be aware of those practices since the development level of medical research is so sophisticated that its trial on population of those countries does not mean that they benefit of it, due to their low revenues.
Another principle of ethics is Charity (Well-doing). Indeed, research should not have any other goal but bringing well-being to humans, by promoting his health and preventing pain and suffering. Any other kind of research, where the ratio benefit/risk is sufficiently low should be disapproved by ethical committees. Ethical committees should give their review report before the beginning of the research to insure that all ethical principles are respected. Moreover, and this is the rule in ethical committee guidelines, research promoter and experimenter have to keep ethical committee members informed throughout the course of the trial or research and to send them the final report.
The purpose of a Islamic Ethical Network specifically dedicated to IBEST is to allow a faster spread of information, sensitization, and education on bioethics all over Islamic and OIC Countries.