SBRI19006U Ethics in Translational Medicine I

The overall aim of this course is to instruct participants how to assess research ethical dilemmas in modern biomedical translational research and provide them with relevant information on ethical challenges when writing applications for ethical reviews. The course will attribute time to what is called ‘participant data’ in applications to the regional research ethics committee.

This course is the first of the two ethics courses in the BRIDGE - Translational Excellence Programme. As scientists, we are legally obliged to submit our research for evaluation and permission by the appropriate research ethics authorities, for example the Regional Research Ethics Committee. However, we are also morally obliged to reflect regularly about why, how, and on whom we are doing the research we do, what consequences that research might have, and the dilemmas it tends to sprout everywhere. The Ethics I course focuses on the first obligation of submitting research for ethical evaluation and pays only superficial attention to the latter. The latter aspect will be thoroughly covered in the Ethics II course.

This course is discussion-based and will include examples from the participants’ own projects.

The course will cover

• The basics of research ethics of studies involving human subjects and experimental animal.
• The basics of responsible conduct of science.
• A brief introduction to the structure behind the research ethics committee system.
• The basics of informed consent and written participant information.
• Research ethics of big data and genetic data used in translational research
• Writing applications to research ethics committees.