Situación Actual de los Comités de Ética de Investigación en Seres Humanos en Latinoamérica

Abstract

Introduction: Scientific advances and the desire to create technologies include risks that have led to the human beingseen as an object of study. Given this situation, in order to protect their fundamental rights, legal and ethical standards and committees have been developed to limit and control these abuses. Specifically, the ethics committees for research involving human beings (CEISH) play a fundamental role in both the methodological and ethical evaluation of research projects, since they guarantee objectivity and impartiality in these processes. Objective: Describe the current situation of the CEISH in Latin America. Methods: A narrative bibliographic review was carried out. The inclusion criteria were scientific articles published during the period 2017-2022, in Spanish and English. Search terms Medical Subjects Headings and Health Science Descriptors were used, in addition to the Boolean operators AND and OR. In database: Lilacs, Google Scholar, Medline. Results: At the Latin American level, international norms, principles and foundations are not applied in the formation of the CEISH, there are regulations with different criteria in each country. In the evaluation of the research protocols, differences were found in their management. Among the limitations for its development are the lack of administrative personnel, infrastructure, work overload, limited economic resources, and the absence of computer tools. Conclusions: The strengthening of the CEISH is a challenge to meet in order to guarantee the protection of the dignity and well-being of the subjects participating in quality research. Keywords: Ethics committees, human rights, research, ethical standards, research and development projects.