/ image alliance, Flashpic, Jens Krick
Berlin – Next Friday, the Federal Council wants to discuss the draft Medical Research Law for the first time. The medical profession criticizes, among other things, a newly planned Federal Ethics Commission. The state house health committee and the cultural and economic issues committees see the issue the same way.
In a recommendation to the Federal Council, you speak out against a specialized ethics commission. The reason is that this would undermine the structure of ethics committees at state level. There are also concerns about the independence of the “Specialized Ethics Committee on Special Procedures”.
The German Medical Association (BAK), the 128th German Medical Association and others have long protested plans for a specialized central ethics committee.
“Taking into account the unusually uniform criticisms from scientific associations, the pharmaceutical industry, ethics committees and the medical profession, it is incomprehensible why the criticisms raised by, among others, the German Medical Association and the German Study Localization Initiative (ISD) also because the constructive solutions developed jointly by everyone involved have not yet been addressed”, he states in a motion approved by the Medical Association last week.
The Federal Council’s main health committee also recommends removing from the law the option to keep negotiated contributions for medication reimbursement confidential, “since the great lack of transparency is only compensated by questionable benefits”. The medical profession and health insurance companies also harshly criticized this regulation in the draft law.
The committees, however, welcome the introduction of standard contractual clauses for clinical trials to simplify contract negotiations between sponsors and trial sites. © hil/aerzteblatt.de