We're working alongside project partners in a research consortium involving institutions from four different countries. We have an ethical question as to whether each institution should seek approval from it's own ethics committee for the research it will carry out in it's own jurisdiction as part of the project, or will approval from one ethics committee cover all.
All members must satisfy the minimum requirements from each institution. Besides, such will enhance comity between international and local institutions as well.
This is an excellent question and one that needs to be discussed even in the Canadian context.
I would say that receiving ethics approval from the ethics committee(s) of each jurisdiction would be the appropriate course of action as ethics is a dynamic and changing field and ethical standards may differ across jurisdictions.
In Canada, as per the Tri-Council Policy Statement guidelines, for a research project that involves multiple researchers from different institutions, ethics approval has to be sought from each institutions' Research Ethics Board (REB) - although, it is possible to receive ethics approval from institution and go through an 'expedited' process at the other institutions.
I'm curious to see what others think!
One ethics review can be sufficient if the other IRB/REC's "waive" oversight to the one. But they don't have to waive if they prefer not to, and may review for their own institution/PI independently. There is a big push now to adopt "single IRB" for multisite studies, a slightly different scenario, but the same idea -- one ethics review for all PI's or sites. This idea is perhaps efficient but has obvious and profound flawed premises. Ethics review has always been based on local review, local "ethos". Indeed the root of all ethics is "local". This can be particularly important for international research, where the investigators come from different cultures, adopting alien norms to the society where the research is be take place. But sometimes neither local law not local infrastructure provide for norms for ethical review, so distant review is the best you can get. Multiple reviews are therefore a good check on a single, "alien" review.
In my opinion, each institution should perform their own review, whether the proposed research is national or international. Relying on other IRBs to perform "the" adequate review is a substandard approach. While a larger institution's IRB may perform more reviews, there is no guarantee all proposals are done better. "Waiving" oversight is a vote of non-accountability. It is like saying, "Oh, this article for a peer reveiw journal will be reviewed by someone else, so there is no need to reveiw closely." The common misconception that the larger the institution, the more ethical their review is inadequate. Is not serving on an IRB to protect patients an honor as well as a duty?
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