Founded on April 21, 1995.
The primary aim of Center’s activities is promoting the research done at NAS institutions in the field of fundamental biomedical research in compliance with bioethics standards and principles; organizing respective integrated studies of NAS institutes in conjunction with institutions of other ministries and agencies, including foreign ones; promoting the participation of Ukraine in international collaboration on bioethics and biomedicine.
Since 1998 the Center has hosted the Bioethics Committee under NAS Presidium (from 2002 to 2005 it was the main authority of the Commission on Bioethics under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine). The principal tasks of the Committee are fostering the establishment of legislative framework for Ukraine joining international agreements on bioethics, preparing the recommendations for bioethics expert reviews, coordinating the activities of ethics committees of various levels in Ukraine.
The Center did a lot of research and organizational work to hold three National Congresses on Bioethics with international participation (2001, 2004 and 2007) in Kyiv. These events resulted in ‘The Ethical Code of Physician of Ukraine’ and ‘General Ethical Standards for Experiments on Animals’. In pursuance of the resolution of the 2-nd Congress, bioethics review of candidate-of-science and doctor-of-science theses in clinical and experimental medicine, biology and veterinary was introduced (Bulletin of HAC of Ukraine, 2005, №5, p.2). According to the recommendations of the 3-rd Congress, a draft of ‘Ethical Code of Ukrainian Scientists’ was drawn up. Work is going on towards preparing basic documents for the ratification by Verkhovna Rada of the EU Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine.
The Center maintains close collaboration with such international organizations as the Forum of Ethics Committees of the Commonweath of Independent States (FECCIS), UNESCO, Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of CIS countries, European Federation of Biotechnology etc.
Jointly with FECCIS representatives, a prototype law ‘On protecting human rights and dignity in biomedical research’ was drafted. Later it was adopted by the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of CIS Countries. This law is to ensure the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms during biomedical research on the territory of CIS countries. To improve the activities of ethics committees, special recommendations were worked out on the use of standard operational procedures (SOP) in ethics reviews of biomedical studies (“Standard Operational Procedures in Activities of Ethics Committees”, Saint-Petersburg, 2004, 100 pp.).
The Laboratory of mathematical modeling of non-linear processes was set up within the Center in 2008. Its basic task is to study non-linear processes in neurophysiology and other areas of science and technologies, with a view to their practical application.
In recent years, the Center has been engaged in joint research projects under INTAS, NATO and the Sixth and Seventh Framework Programmes of the European Commission.