I was talking to a friend on the other day about IRB regulations in the US for conducting any research particulary if it involves human subjects. A grad student from MSU if conducts a study in NY for example, s/he will go through the review and approval procedures twice- once from MSU and then from NY as well. This is superb isn't it...human subjects specially the minors, young children and almost everyone is protected against any expected harmful consequences.
But then a further thought was... aren't people living in developing countries "human beings"...can't they have the similar harmful consequences? Yes the US universities/institutions are very careful about that too, so even myself when planning to conduct a study in Pakistan have to go through the IRB approval. Good!
But what about the USAID, UNESCO, CPBEP, GTZ, Worldbank and other donor agencies... do they follow the same rules and regulations when they go and conduct studies in developing countries like Pakistan? To my little knowledge many such researches are mostly conducted by the researchers hired from local institutions or organizations. The researchers are local but the research is designed and approved by the donor agency, funding is provided by the donor agency, reports are submitted to the donor agencies and results appear on their websites and published reports.
I have been a subject and a researcher in those studies too. As a respondent I do not remember signing any consent form before responding and as a researcher nobody ever indicated that I have to ask for a consent from the respondents... why??? I was never asked questions about the confidentiality and anonymity of the data i collected. I was never refered to any of the IRB approvals and reviews....why???
I am astonished knowing the fact that the people working in many of Pakistani institutions are foreign qualified, so they definitely know about all these procedures and regulations, why they never tried to apply this in Pakistan. The donor agencies are funding all the huge research studies then why has it never been a must to follow the same research ethics everywhere in the world as they have in their home countries.
Hmmm many might say this is our system's weakness but my point is: do the ethics work only under a system...or should the ethics be followed everywhere once we have learnt about it?
