The Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) announced the release of its Ethics Guidelines for Human Biomedical Research. The Guidelines serve as a useful public resource and guidance on the ethical, legal and social rights and responsibilities of all stakeholders in human biomedical research, especially research participants.
In the process of creating the guidelines, the Committee considered the feedback received from the public and the written responses from various organisations during its public consultation in June 2012. To facilitate public deliberation and discussion, a consultation paper was sent to 88 research, governmental and healthcare institutions, and professional and religious organisations for comments.
The Humanist Society (Singapore) was one of the 88 consulted. We submitted the following input on 13 August 2012.
We, the Humanist Society (Singapore), a registered society representing the non-religious in Singapore, would like to express our support for the draft “Ethics Guidelines for Human Biomedical Research”. We believe that research is vital to understanding nature and holds great potential for extending human lifespans and improving quality of life. In particular, we agree with the committee’s stand that stem cell research should not be prohibited, but instead regulated with guidelines based on our current understanding of Science.
Our input was included in page C12, Annex C.
You can download the report and the annexes here.
