Clinical Ethics Consultation and Research Ethics Consultation: A Call for Italy

In their article, Kathryn May Porter et al. (2018) describe their experience with the National Research Ethics Consul- tation Collaborative, a nationwide group of research ethics consultants. The Collaborative and every single Research Ethics Consultation can be a valuable resource for investi- gators and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) regarding regulatory reviews and challenging ethical issues, assisting IRBs and investigators with informed consent and risk/ benefit analysis, and as a flexible resource that can provide assistance to or even be directly engaged with research participants. According to the authors, researchers now have the opportunity to benefit from access to similar sort of assistance that many clinicians have had access through clinical ethics consult services. Clinical ethics and Research ethics consultation serv- ices can represent a valuable resource for institutions engaged in biomedical research.