KARACHI, Nov 28: Research ethics holds extreme relevance and importance for local healthcare professionals and researchers in a scenario where human subjects are particularly at risk owing to non-existent or weak accountability at institutional and government levels.

The fact was explicitly highlighted at the two-day international conference and workshop on “Fundamentals of research ethics: international and regional perspectives”, inaugurated here on Monday under the aegis of the Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture of Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation.

Prof Farhat Moazzam of Biomedical Ethics and Culture Centre and Prof Adibul Hasan Rizvi in their respective presentations, at the inaugural session, called for due consideration towards the issue in the larger benefit of vulnerable as well as resourceless individuals, besides for the sake of national progress and development in its true sense.

Speaking as the chief guest, Prof Pirzada Qasim, the vice-chancellor of Karachi University, mentioned that the country’s first national centre for bio-ethics would be functional within a year at the university with the support of the Higher Education Commission.

He mentioned that Rs3.9 million had been allocated for the purpose and the centre was expected to be made functional by the next year.

Appreciating the educational-cum-training initiatives taken by the SIUT as well as the CBEC, he mentioned that the SIUT, one among the 174 different institutes affiliated with the KU, had emerged to be the best in terms of quality and relevance of its programmes.

He said that some 20,000 students were seeking education in 57 disciplines at Karachi University campus, besides thousands other registered with the university, seeking training and education at KU affiliated centres.

Addressing the inaugural session, Dr Adibul Hasan Rizvi observed that research was meaningless if it did not benefit the human kind and these benefits were not available to everyone.

Underscoring the need to safeguard the interest of common people, the senior medical practitioner warned research devoid of ethics could be extremely precarious. He referred to rampant discrepancies and said that thousands of people continued to die of malaria and tuberculosis as well as other such ailments that were treatable.

Similarly, 90 per cent of AIDS victims had no access to required medication available in many parts of the world, he said.

In her presentation on “Research unchained: hopes and hype”, Dr Farhat Moazzam observed that to ensure human subject research in an ethical fashion was not an easy matter. “We have the guidelines, but to utilize them effectively we must develop a sense of moral responsibility, compassion and empathy towards those we wish to have as participants in research,” she said.

With specific reference to Pakistan, she drew the attention of the participants of the workshop towards the exponential increase in clinical drug trials being presently witnessed in the country with multinational pharmaceutical companies as major players.

“In almost all these instances, it is physicians who are being approached for help and serve as investigators,” she said adding that drug now constitute the most common form of research taking place in Pakistan.

Elaborating her instance, she mentioned that almost 66 per cent of research proposals that were reviewed by the Ethics Review Committee every year in one of the country’s teaching institutions involved drug trials.

Another pertinent issue requiring serious attention from conscientious citizens, professionals and lay people alike was said to be the proliferation of private and commercial companies in “Stem Cell Research,” which till date was in its preliminary stages, as therapy or treatment for various diseases.

Dr Qiu Renzong, associated with the Chinese Society for Medical Ethics, delivered his keynote address “Bioethics and search for moral diversity”.

Later, WHO Dr Luc Noel formally launched the CBEC website. –-APP