Blackmer-DoH-Helsinki-20141111

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Implementation of the DoH in the Americas:
Challenges and successes
Dr. Jeff Blackmer
Director of Ethics
Canadian Medical Association
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Outline
!  Background and context
!  United States
!  Canada
!  South America
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Background and context
!  The Declaration of Helsinki (DoH) is not a legally binding document
under international laws.
!  However, it exerts authority through the extent to which it has directly
and indirectly influenced national and international legislation and
regulations.
!  In some cases, it has been codified into those laws and regulations.
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!  It is important to always keep in mind, however, that the Declaration is
morally binding on physicians, and that this obligation is generally
considered to override any national or local laws or regulations.
!  Paragraph 10 of the 2013 version of the DoH states:
!  No national or international ethical, legal or regulatory requirement
should reduce or eliminate any of the protections for research
subjects set forth in this Declaration.
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!  Since the publication of the original version of the DoH in 1964, there
has been a proliferation of numerous national and international research
ethics guidelines and documents.
!  While there is some degree of alignment and overlap between many of
these documents, there are points of divergence as well, particularly in
more controversial areas such as post-trial access and the use of
placebos.
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!  Amongst international documents, the DoH is relatively unique in that it
represents a set of ethical principles combined with some degree of
proscriptive detail, while many of the other documents are more
technical in nature.
!  However, their presence has meant that a number of national regulatory
bodies have decided to make reference primarily to one particular
document or standard.
!  For some, this has meant “choosing” between using the DoH as a
standard versus another more static and/or technical document.
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!  Such documents include, but are not limited to
!  The World Health Organization (WHO) and its Standards and Operational
Guidance for Ethics Review of Health-Related Research with Human
Participants
!  The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS)
International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human
Subjects
!  Good Clinical Practice standards developed by the International Conference
on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Registration of
Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH-GCP)
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!  The DoH is unique amongst these policies and guidelines in that it is
written and updated by physicians for physicians and final approval of
the document rests solely with the physician representatives of the
World Medical Association.
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United States of America
!  In April 2006, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
published a regulatory change ending the need for clinical trials
conducted outside of the US to comply with the Declaration of Helsinki.
!  Previous to this, the FDA had already rejected the 2000 version of the
DoH and all subsequent revisions, recognizing only the 1989 version in
its regulations.
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!  These decisions were made largely over the question of whether
placebos should be allowed in clinical trials in resource-poor settings
(and to a lesser extent on the issue of post-trial access).
!  Representatives from the FDA have actively engaged on the placebo
issue with the WMA, including during the DoH revision processes and as
part of the placebo-control meetings held in Sao Paulo.
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What the FDA says
!  “We didn’t think the World Medical Association understood you really do
need placebos to learn something in a lot of cases. Fundamentally, in a
lot of symptomatic conditions, it’s common for studies that compare a
new drug with placebo to fail. If doing the right design, or doing an
informative design would mean denying somebody a therapy that would
really save their lives, then you just can’t do the study at all. Everybody
agrees on that. But if it’s just a matter of symptoms, having a headache
a little longer, being depressed for a few more days, I would say most
people and certainly we believe that you could ask a person to
participate in a study [using placebos]. But it’s not unethical to do a trial
like that.”
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!  “What I think has happened to some extent is that the Declaration has
moved from a purely ethical document to a document that is increasingly
interested in social justice. For example, they clearly are very upset that
people in poor countries don’t have really good medical care. And I’m
upset by that too. But I don’t think that determines the ethics of a trial.”
!  Robert Temple, Director of the Office of Medical Policy at the FDA’s
Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, EBMO Reports, 2006
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Pharmaceutical industry concerns
!  Fearing that these new obligations (to use a comparator other than
placebo) would make it harder to prove the efficacy of a new drug and
would drive up the costs of development, drug developers, particularly in
the USA, are protesting.
!  EBMO Reports, 2006
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Criticism of the FDA decision
!  “For the last 30 years, US organizations said they loved the Declaration
of Helsinki. All of a sudden, people effectively lobbied to make some
changes to the DoH after the HIV/AIDS trials. And now the FDA says,
‘Helsinki? What is that? That doesn’t mean anything.’ It’s just totally
hypocritical on their part to follow the DoH as long as it says what they
want it to say, and as soon as it’s changed, say it doesn’t mean
anything.”
!  George Annas, Chairman of the Health Law Department at Boston University’s
School of Public Health, 2006
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!  The FDA now references the ICH-GCP document instead, a change
made in April 2008.
!  Unlike the declaration, those standards are developed by regulators in
Japan, the US and Europe, in conjunction with the pharmaceutical
industry.
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Concerns about pharma influence
!  Pharmaceutical companies ultimately look to see what are the
regulations and laws they must comply with in whatever countries they
are going to seek approval to market a particular product. To the extent
that it’s easier and perhaps less costly to conduct their research in
settings that appear to have looser standards or less rigorous ethical
processes, then we’ve seen a trend in which they have been moving
more towards doing research in that setting.
!  CMAJ November 6, 2012
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!  The FDA’s adoption of less morally stringent guidelines could encourage
pharmaceutical companies to take ethical short cuts. It could also have
practical consequences for trial ethics in developing countries, especially
where research ethics committees may not be promoting high standards
of protection for participants in clinical trials, due to lack of financial and
human resources.
!  Pharmaceutical companies may also pressurise research ethics
committees to relax guidelines and legislation, in order to facilitate future
clinical trials in developing and emerging countries that lack the
resources to conduct their own clinical research on epidemics such as
HIV/AIDS, which have devastating effects on their populations.
!  South African J of Bioethics and Law 2012
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The Common Rule
!  Several US departments and agencies subscribe to subpart A of the
relevant section of the Code of Federal Regulations, often referred to as
the “Common Rule”.
!  The Common Rule is intended to establish a comprehensive framework
for the review and conduct of proposed human research to ensure that it
will be performed ethically.
!  It includes provisions concerning research conducted in foreign
countries.
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!  According to 45 CFR 46.10110:
!  When research covered by this policy takes place in foreign countries,
procedures normally followed in the foreign countries to protect human
subjects may differ from those set forth in this policy.
!  An example is a foreign institution which complies with guidelines consistent
with the World Medical Assembly Declaration of Helsinki (amended 1989)
issued either by sovereign states or by an organisation whose function for the
protection of human research subjects is internationally recognized.
!  In these circumstances, if a department or agency head determines that the
procedures prescribed by the institution afford protections that are at least
equivalent to those provided in this policy, the department or agency head
may approve the substitution of the foreign procedures in lieu of the
procedural requirements provided in this policy.
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Canada
!  Canada does not have a uniform and comprehensive legislative or
regulatory framework pertaining to research involving human subjects.
!  Two different sets of documents are the main sources that govern
research involving human subjects in Canada.
!  One of them (Health Canada’s Food and Drug Regulations) addresses
clinical trials that test new drugs or medical devices for approval in
Canada, and the other (The Tricouncil Policy Statement, or TCPS)
addresses studies that have received federal research funding.
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!  The Food and Drug Regulations do not reference the DoH.
!  However, Health Canada has introduced the full text of the ICH-GCP
Guideline (with its own references to the DoH) into its regulatory regime
as a Guidance Document.
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!  In the Introduction to the Guidance Document, Health Canada states:
!  Good Clinical Practice (GCP) is an international ethical and scientific
quality standard for designing, conducting, recording and reporting
trials that involve the participation of human subjects. Compliance
with this standard provides public assurance that the rights, safety
and well-being of trial subjects are protected, consistent with the
principles that have their origin in the Declaration of Helsinki, and that
the clinical trial data are credible.
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!  The TCPS applies to all research funded by the federal research
granting agencies, and was most recently revised in 2010.
!  It contains two references to the DoH, in the reference sections for
Chapter 8 (Multi-Jurisdictional Research) and Chapter 11 (Clinical
Trials).
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South America
!  Uruguay
!  The Declaration of Helsinki is used in Uruguay as the main research
ethics guideline by which all researchers must abide.
!  National legislation incorporates the 2000 revised version of the
document.
!  Later modifications on the use of placebo are not part of the legislation.
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!  Brazil
!  Following the 2008 revision, Brazil immediately contested the position
adopted by the WMA concerning the use of placebo in research
involving human beings.
!  According to the position advocated officially by the Brazilian
government, through a Resolution from its National Health Board, « the
benefits, risks, difficulties and effectiveness of a new method should be
tested by comparing them with the best present methods »
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Double standard concern
!  There remains in some parts of South America a concern about a
“double standard” for research that they feel is not fully addressed by the
DoH.
!  Subjects in resource-poor settings may be exposed to placebo controls
or to controls that are less then standard of care in more developed
countries.
!  Research may not be responsive to the needs of the community in which
it is conducted.
!  While revisions of the DoH have attempted to address some of these
concerns, they have not done so to the satisfaction of all of those
involved.
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Declaration of Cordoba
!  In November 2008, the Congress of the Latin-American and Caribbean
Bioethics Network of UNESCO (Redbioetica) approved the Declaration
of Cordoba on Ethics in Research with Human Beings.
!  This document proposed that Latin American countries, governments
and organisations should refuse to follow 2008 version of the
Declaration of Helsinki, which was approved in Seoul, South Korea.
!  It recommended instead as an ethical and normative frame of reference
the principles of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human
Rights , proclaimed in October 2005 at the UNESCO General
Conference.
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!  The Declaration of Cordoba states that:
!  The new version of the DoH can seriously affect the safety, well-being
and rights of persons who participate as volunteers in medical
research studies.
!  The acceptance of different standards of medical care, as well as the
new possibilities for using placebo, are considered ethically
unacceptable practices and are contrary to the idea of human dignity
and human rights.
!  The lack of hard post-study obligations in relation to the persons who
volunteered to participate in the studies and to the host communities,
offends people’s integrity and amplifies social inequity.
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Summary
!  The use and implementation of the DoH in the Americas is, to say the
least, inconsistent and controversial.
!  In the United States, the FDA does not endorse the document, and only
references the 1989 version.
!  In South American countries, there remains a concern that the DoH
does not contain sufficient safeguards when it comes to the issues of
placebo controls and post-trial access.