MRC ethics guidelines

The MRC Ethics Committee has produced ethics guidelines in the form of a series of five separate booklets in the style of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. These booklets were published between 2000 and 2005. Revision of each booklet can be done separately in future.

Previous guidelines
Guidelines on Ethics for Medical Research, Medical Research Council, 1993.

The revised guidelines:

• Book 1 (2002)
  Guidelines on Ethics in Medical Research: General Principles.

• Book 2 (2002)
  Guidelines on Ethics in Reproductive Biology and Genetic Research.

• Book 3 (2004)
  Guidelines on Ethics in the Use of Animals in Research.
       
• Book 4 (2002)
  Guidelines on Ethics in the Use of Biohazards and Radiation.
         
• Book 5 (2003)
  Guidelines on Ethics in HIV Vaccine Trials.  

For whom are these guidelines?
The MRC guidelines are concerned with research by anyone on human participants and animals. The guidelines consider all forms of research on individual persons, whether they be volunteers or patients, and include the study of treatment which may benefit the individual patient (therapeutic research) and the acquisition of knowledge which may be of no immediate benefit to the patient (non-therapeutic research). These guidelines apply also to research of a non-clinical nature on humans. Guidelines on ethics in the use of animals in research will dealt with in Book 3 of the MRC guidelines series.

Recommended reading
The Belmont Report