The VOLRETHICS Association aims at better protecting healthy volunteers that participate in research around the world and at empowering them to get their voice heard on issues that concern them.
Healthy volunteers contribute to the advancement of science and medicine through their participation in research studies, yet very few countries have special legal provisions to protect them as a specific type of human research participant. Furthermore, internationally accepted reference texts, such as the Declaration of Helsinki, the ICH Good Clinical Practice, and the CIOMS guidelines, were developed to protect all human research participants equally from patients to healthy volunteers, they are virtually silent about the ethical concerns most pertinent to healthy volunteer trials.
The objectives of the VOLRETHICS Association are to
- Promote global awareness of the specific ethical and scientific issues related to the involvement of healthy volunteers in research,
- Foster the development of good practices, guidelines, regulations and laws for their protection,
- Support research to better characterize ethical, societal and scientific issues that are specific to the involvement of healthy volunteers in research,
- Foster the creation of support groups of healthy volunteers.
Our achievements
Our key achievement to date is the publication of the “Global Ethics Charter for the Protection of Healthy Volunteers in Clinical Trials” in June 2024, now available in 10 languages. Inserm and DNDi (Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative) are the first two organizations to have adopted the Charter in 2025.
The VolREthics initiative is cited by the European Commission’s Research Ethics and Integrity Division as one of the networks promoting scientific ethics and integrity in the context of Horizon Europe funding.
Several publications on our work were made in the scientific litterature and other media.