The Pakistan Experience

This article featuring Pakistan constitutes one of five articles in a collection of essays on local capacity-building in research ethics by graduates from the University of Toronto’s Joint Centre for Bioethics MHSc in Bioethics, International Stream programme funded by the Fogarty International Center for Advanced Study in the Health Sciences (FIC). Research ethics in Pakistan is an emerging field seeking to articulate best ethical standards for research practices. It is best understood as the initiation of a dialogue. Still, there are weak mechanisms for research ethics and there is an absence of mechanisms for monitoring ongoing research, particularly for assessing compliance with the recommendations of ethics review committees. Further, there are few qualified individuals in research ethics in both the private and public sectors. There are multiple challenges associated with research ethics, many of them stemming from issues around development and democratization, which cannot be addressed by guidelines and regulatory processes alone.