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The dual use of research ethics committees: why professional self-governance falls short in preserving biosecurity

BACKGROUND: Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) constitutes a major challenge for research practice and oversight on the local, national and international level. The situation in Germany is shaped by two partly competing suggestions of how to regulate security-related research: The German Ethics Cou...

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Autor principal: Salloch, Sabine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5989368/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29871633
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-018-0295-0
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author Salloch, Sabine
author_facet Salloch, Sabine
author_sort Salloch, Sabine
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description BACKGROUND: Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) constitutes a major challenge for research practice and oversight on the local, national and international level. The situation in Germany is shaped by two partly competing suggestions of how to regulate security-related research: The German Ethics Council, as an independent political advisory body, recommended a series of measures, including national legislation on DURC. Competing with that, the German National Academy of Sciences and the German Research Foundation, as two major professional bodies, presented a strategy which draws on the self-control of science and, inter alia, suggests expanding the scope of research ethics committees (RECs) to an evaluation of DURC. MAIN BODY: This situation is taken as an occasion to further discuss the scope and limits of professional self-control with respect to security-related research. The role of RECs as professional bodies of science is particularly analyzed, referring to the theoretical backgrounds of professionalism. Two key sociological features of professionalism – ethical orientation and professional self-control – are discussed with respect to the practice of biomedical science. Both attributes are then analyzed with respect to the assessment of DURC by RECs. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, it is stated that issues of biosecurity transcend the boundaries of the scientific community and that a more comprehensive strategy should be implemented encompassing both professional self-control and legal oversight.
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spelling pubmed-59893682018-06-20 The dual use of research ethics committees: why professional self-governance falls short in preserving biosecurity Salloch, Sabine BMC Med Ethics Debate BACKGROUND: Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) constitutes a major challenge for research practice and oversight on the local, national and international level. The situation in Germany is shaped by two partly competing suggestions of how to regulate security-related research: The German Ethics Council, as an independent political advisory body, recommended a series of measures, including national legislation on DURC. Competing with that, the German National Academy of Sciences and the German Research Foundation, as two major professional bodies, presented a strategy which draws on the self-control of science and, inter alia, suggests expanding the scope of research ethics committees (RECs) to an evaluation of DURC. MAIN BODY: This situation is taken as an occasion to further discuss the scope and limits of professional self-control with respect to security-related research. The role of RECs as professional bodies of science is particularly analyzed, referring to the theoretical backgrounds of professionalism. Two key sociological features of professionalism – ethical orientation and professional self-control – are discussed with respect to the practice of biomedical science. Both attributes are then analyzed with respect to the assessment of DURC by RECs. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, it is stated that issues of biosecurity transcend the boundaries of the scientific community and that a more comprehensive strategy should be implemented encompassing both professional self-control and legal oversight. BioMed Central 2018-06-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5989368/ /pubmed/29871633 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-018-0295-0 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Debate
Salloch, Sabine
The dual use of research ethics committees: why professional self-governance falls short in preserving biosecurity
title The dual use of research ethics committees: why professional self-governance falls short in preserving biosecurity
title_full The dual use of research ethics committees: why professional self-governance falls short in preserving biosecurity
title_fullStr The dual use of research ethics committees: why professional self-governance falls short in preserving biosecurity
title_full_unstemmed The dual use of research ethics committees: why professional self-governance falls short in preserving biosecurity
title_short The dual use of research ethics committees: why professional self-governance falls short in preserving biosecurity
title_sort dual use of research ethics committees: why professional self-governance falls short in preserving biosecurity
topic Debate
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5989368/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29871633
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-018-0295-0
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