The Genesis and Development of Research Ethics Committees in Canada, 1960–1978

Following World War ii, many medical investigators continued their ambitious experimental interventions as rationalized, rather than justified, trials. In Canada, there were hardly any legally proscriptive or prescriptive instruments to regulate clinical experimentation until the 1960s. What was ethical could rightly be established only in the course of devising clinical research protocols and undertaking the procedures thereof. This paper examines an historical trajectory shaping human-subject research and its regulation in Canada. I argue that public disclosures of human experimentation, court litigation resulting from clinical research, international standardization of regulations on biomedical investigation, and the proliferation of clinical trials induced the evolution of human research ethics and the elaboration of guidelines to regulate it. In this process, Canadian physician-investigators adopted British and American guidelines on the conduct of ethically acceptable clinical research and modified them according to local circumstances. The first research ethics committees emerged at the Canadian university-affiliated teaching hospitals, where the investigative practices revealed and clarified the changing meanings of human research ethics.