Página 128 - Dimensiones éticas de las regulaciones en salud

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Application of international guidelines to
national regulations on research: building
research ethics infrastructure in Lithuania
Eugenijus Gefenas
Introduction
The paper aims at presenting the main features of building research ethics
infrastructure in Lithuania as well as other Central and Eastern European
(CEE) countries. These countries are also called European transition soci-
eties due to their move to democratic self-rule and attempt to join the key
European structures: the European Union and the Council of Europe.
The analysis of the developments and functioning of the ethical review
systems for biomedical research in Lithuania could provide some insights
into the systematic features of ethical review and protection of research
participants in Europe. The paper will show how the international Eu-
ropean guidelines and legal standards are being applied in the societies
where tradition of institutionalized ethical review is rather recent. It will
also emphasize the areas of concern in the emerging framework of ethical
review of human research. We hope that some tendencies and challenges
that are characteristic to the European societies in transition will also be of
some interest to the countries of Latin America.
Ethical review of human research in the countries of Central
and Eastern Europe
The importance of addressing the issue of ethical review of human re-
search in the Central and Eastern Europe stems from the fact that bio-