The Cyprus National Bioethics Committee (CNBC) was established in 2001 and its members are appointed by the Council of Ministers for a term of four years. The purpose of establishing CNBC is the continuous monitoring, survey, systematic analysis and evaluation of issues and problems relating to scientific research, progress and implementation of the sciences of biotechnology, biology, medicine and genetics and pharmaceutics, as well as human intervention on the biological procedure and the human genotype and the investigation of their moral, deontological, social, humanistic and legal dimensions.
To achieve the above objectives, CNBC has set up three multidisciplinary Review Bioethical Committees (RECs) for bioethical evaluation and approval of research programs:
• Review Bioethics Committee for Biomedical Research in Humans;
• Review Bioethics Committee (REC) for Biomedical Research and Clinical Trials on Medicinal Products for Human Use A’, and;
• Review Bioethics Committee (REC) for Biomedical Research and Clinical Trials on Medicinal Products for Human Use B’.
Through the bioethical evaluation of research programs, the main goal of CNBC is the protection of the rights, safety, and dignity of those who participate in research, whether they are patients or healthy volunteers. The main principles governing research with human participants should include:
• the interests and well-being of research participants must take precedence over the interests of society or science;
• human research is to be conducted only if there are no less invasive alternatives of comparable effectiveness;
• research should not contain disproportionate risks and burdens on humans from the expected benefits resulting from the process;
• the sociological or psychological burden are elements that coexist with medicinal burden in many forms of biomedical research, thus these should be taken into consideration.
Contact information:
Tel.: +357 22809038 / 22809039 / 22819101
Fax: +357 22353878
Email: cnbc@bioethics.gov.cy
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