Making ASU ethics committees more productive: Responsible research needs more than developing the guidelines

Ethics has been an integral component of health care research. Various guidelines have been developed globally to ensure ethical conduct of research. Ethics committees (EC) at research organizations have been instituted and empowered to oversee the research conduction in an ethical context. Traditional Indian health care research involving AYUSH systems (particularly drug based systems including Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani – ASU), also come under the broad ethics purview since it involves human or animal participation. Although assigned with a greater responsibility of ensuring and promoting responsible research in the campus, ECs at ASU institutions are yet to be positioned as the promoters of ethics and integrity in research. There had been anomalies in EC structure and function and there had not been the observance of SOPs about considering ethics in research. Poor understanding about their role and function in EC by individual members and poor appreciation of their role in building a responsible research culture across the institution holds much behind suboptimal EC performance. Central Council of Indian Medicine’s (CCIM) recent note of the situation and initiation to make a separate guideline for EC functioning in ASU is a welcome step in this regard. However, it may not be the most appropriate step for its possibility of diluting the research standards in favor of ASU. What seems more appropriate is to empower the ASU ECs with knowledge about global standards of ethics and integrity in research to optimize their role in building a responsible research culture in ASU. Naturally, they may need initial help to get evolved subsequently as accountable stakeholders able to care for their own research needs while making attempts to make their benchmarks similar to the global standards.