The Missing Committees: Research Ethics in the Making in Switzerland

Abstract

This article analyzes the formation of research ethics and particularly of ethics committees in Switzerland by tracing their early history along distinct phases: (1) the first guidelines on human experimentation issued by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences in 1970; (2) conceptual struggles in establishing these norms; (3) the emergence of a central medical-ethical committee in 1979; and (4) the first local ethics committee established in the rural canton of Thurgau in 1987. It analyzes the interplay between local practices, industrial standards, and a neoliberal, low-key, soft regulation by negotiation among peers. Key actors are the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, the pharmaceutical industry, and the canton of Thurgau. In this context, ‘research’ and ‘experiments’ for a long time remained disputed, unclear and risky notions. rec s were encouraged mainly as a way of distributing responsibility, of managing a wide array of risks and, crucially, as part of a wider strategy to avoid juridical and political regulation. The article asks, on a more general level, how and why ‘ethics’ entered this field and what becomes visible or obscured when issues are transposed into an ethical language.