Institutional Review Boards, Worldwide (IRBs)

Abstract

"The concept of Bioethics Committees evolved due to mistreatment of human beings during the periods of war as well as to find a medical treatment-cure for syphilis in the USA. Bioethics committees address ethical and moral issues raised due to the advancement of science and technology in the fields of Life Sciences, Biosciences and Medical Sciences. There is also a need to develop a mechanism to address ethically burdened issues and provide an impetus to governments and policy makers for ethical governance. Such a body which provides such logistic mechanism goes by the umbrella term of Bioethics Committees. Bioethics Committees have taken various dimensions such as Institutional Review Boards (IRB), Research Ethics Committee, National Bioethics Advisory Committee, Policy-making Bioethics Committee, Hospital and Health Care Bioethics Committee and Medical –Health professional bioethics Committees. An analysis has been made to record the number of countries which have IRBs – out of a total of 245 countries. A few countries have more than one hundred IRBs and about 99 countries have no bioethical committees. Special attention has been paid to Indian national scenarios, and case studies of YRG Care and ICMR are discussed. The need to address upcoming biotechnological issues in Asian countries, in the context of IRBs, has been pointed out. The importance of recognizing medical ethics and bioethics as academic disciplines has been pointed out. "