Main Ethical Breaches in Multicenter Clinical Trials Regulations of Turkey

Abstract

Turkey has been a growing market for multicenter clinical trials for the last ten years and is considered among the top ten countries in terms of potential study subject populations. The objective of increasing the share of Turkey in multicenter clinical trials is strongly supported. This ambitious goal of Turkey raises the need to have regulations in compliance with other leading countries conducting clinical trials. The latest published Turkish regulations on clinical trials are structured in compliance with the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) Guidelines and in harmony with the regulations of other leading countries in clinical research, such as the US. There are still flaws in Turkish regulation with the risk of violating human subjects' rights and issues with responsible conduct of research. The aim of this article is to compare Turkish clinical trials regulations with those of the US, to determine if there exists any incompatibility between the countries' regulations and, if so, how to ameliorate these. The main flaws in Turkish clinical trials regulations are identified as follows: lack of definition of the term "human subject; absence of explicit referral to the unacceptability of Conflict of Interest (COI) and taking measures to avoid it; exiguity of emphasis on plurality of the IRB members; nonexistence of a clear expression that this is research; and clinical equipoise, regarding the treatment of the existing clinical problem and lack of integration with international accreditation systems for Institutional Review Boards.