Government calls for clinical trial ethics committee

The ministry of social affairs and health has presented a bill that would create an ethics committee to assess all clinical trials in Finland.

The committee would replace the National Committee on Medical Research Ethics, which advises regional committees on ethics-related issues in medical research and issues opinions on the ethics of clinical drug trials in Finland.

The bill would seek to make several amendments to Finland’s medical research act. The goal is for the law on medical research to be more centralised, and to be more streamlined with the law on clinical trials, the government said in a statement on 14 July.