The increasing progress of medical sciences and the quantitative and qualitative promotion of research in this field, as well as the emphasis on adherence to religious, legal and ethical standards, implementation of various research projects like research on human beings, and the collection of information have raised concerns about abusing and harming human beings. Accordingly, the Research Ethics Committee (REC) attempts to stop disregarding the ethical standards in designing and conducting plans and illegal exploitation of the information of medical research.
In this regard, such guidelines as the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the Belmont Report have developed some ethical principles and standards and advised countries to apply these codes of ethics in bioscience research. Therefore, the ethics committees were established in the universities of medical sciences in Iran to perform several tasks including, observing the applying of ethical principles, protecting the information of human subjects, and using the views of experts from various biology fields.
The REC of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences (TUOMS) was established in accordance with the regulations of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education in 2002. The aim of the committee is to protect the dignity, rights, health and safety of sponsors, researchers, executives and participants in research and observance of justice in distributing benefits and disadvantages of research.