The VolREthics international initiative on ethical issues related with healthy volunteers’ involvement in biomedical research was launched by the Ethics Committee of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm). A first international meeting, held in February 2022 at UNESCO Paris premises, identified research situations where the rights, well-being, and safety of healthy volunteers (HV) may be jeopardized and it identified good practices implemented in some countries to address these issues.

Building on this first meeting, regional seminars are now being organized with two primary purposes: to update our knowledge on the scientific and ethical issues in specific regions of the world, and to build a repository of new insights and policy recommendations to safeguard the rights, well-being, and safety of HV globally.

Focusing on North America, this regional seminar will be hosted by the CMORE (The Comparative Model Organism Research Ethics) for Healthy Volunteers Project and the University of North Carolina Center for Bioethics. It will include discussions on real-life situations experienced by attendees from the USA and Canada, including that of healthy volunteers from the USA.

For more information and registration: https://www.unc.edu/event/how-to-protect-healthy-volunteers-from-exploitation-in-biomedical-research/