Jump to contentJump to search

Ethics Vote & Animal Testing

Research projects at a medical school are different from other doctoral projects.

Human samples as well as confidential patient data are ubiquitous. This research is subject to particular scrutiny as it is ethically sensitive. If your project falls into a field in which you conduct research on or with humans, or work with data collected or analysed about humans, an ethics vote is required. In these cases, the ethics committee is your most important point of contact.

Experiments on animals are widespread, especially in basic medical research. For scientific work involving the use of live laboratory animals, you should contact the Animal Welfare Officer/ZETT in advance.

Before starting your work, check whether you need an ethics vote from the ethics committee or whether an ethics vote already exists for your project..

If an ethics vote is available, please ensure that the vote also covers your own research project and attach a copy of the ethics vote to your registration documents for the medRSD. Doctoral projects without a valid ethics vote are not admitted to doctoral studies.

If you still need to apply for an ethics vote, please attach the coversheet for doctoral projects for doctoral projects to the application you submit to the ethics committee.

The formal background is also laid down in the doctoral regulations:

"For all research on or involving human subjects (also deceased persons), for research with human bodily materials and for research involving the collection or evaluation of personal data, approval must be obtained from the Ethics Committee at the Faculty of Medicine at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf or the respective Ethics Committee responsible before commencing research. This applies equally to prospective and retrospective research projects. Exception: no ethics vote is required for work with commercially available human cells."

Check whether an animal experiment permit is necessary and whether you need an animal experiment certificate for your experiments.

Registration for the animal experimentation course

Medical doctoral researchers who would like to take a course in animal experimentation should register for a place on the course via their supervisor. Only doctoral candidates who have fully registered their doctoral project with the medRSD are admitted to the course.

Doctoral researchers in the natural sciences should contact ZETT directly to register for the animal experimentation course..

Responsible for the content: