The Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP) and the RISE-Health R&D+i Unit was officially presented last Wednesday, 11 June, in the FMUP Council Room.

The director of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, Altamiro da Costa Pereira, explains that the new Committee will enable a response to challenges in the world of research and to the ‘enormous potential from the point of view of research and impact on Portuguese society’.

Fernando Schmitt, director of RISE-Health and professor at FMUP, argues that the creation of an Ethics Committee shared between the country’s largest research unit and FMUP is essential for the scientific development of both institutions, emphasising that the new Committee should ‘be active and offer to help our researchers’.

Rui Nunes, researcher at RISE-Health and also professor at FMUP, points to the creation of the Ethics Committee as ‘a historic moment’.

The president of the new Committee and bioethics expert justifies the establishment of this body with the need to ‘move forward’ in research and respond to the “insurmountable” ethical demands of the current scientific context, based on the ‘UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights’.

‘The central function of an ethics committee is to educate and raise awareness in accordance with the values of our society, democracy, Constitution and international conventions,’ stresses Rui Nunes.

The RISE-Health and FMUP Ethics Committee is made up of a comprehensive team of 11 professionals from fields such as medicine, bioethics, psychology and law, among others. They are Rui Nunes (president), Guilhermina Rego (vice-president), Inês Falcão Pires, Ivone Duarte, Rita Negrão, Mónica Correia, Patrícia Ribeiro, Cristina Prudêncio and Jorge Luiz dos Santos, as well as the external researchers Natália Olívia Teles and Helena Leitão.