The World Medical Associate has approved new revisions to the Declaration of Helsinki, the ethical guidelines for medical research involving human subjects. The newly adopted declaration states that studies must provide “appropriate compensation and treatment for subjects who are harmed as a result of participating in research.” The guideline also calls for further transparency on studies involving human subjects. Trials must be registered before recruitment begins and “researchers have a duty to make publicly available the results of their results of their research on human subjects,” even in the case of negative results.
The revisions are similar to the draft version that was published in April. A full summary of the updates to the Declaration of Helsinki have been published in JAMA, along with an editorial about the changes.