Jump to comment:

• Response to Heather Machin and the Global Alliance of Eye Bank Associations
  Wendy A Rogers
  Published on: 2 June 2019
• Contested organ-obtainment methods in published transplant-research: A timely reminder to those in the affiliated ocular field.
  Heather Machin
  Published on: 7 May 2019

• Published on: 2 June 2019

  Response to Heather Machin and the Global Alliance of Eye Bank Associations

  • Wendy A Rogers, Professor of Clinical Ethics Macquarie University

  We thank Heather Machin for her thoughtful response to our paper. We congratulate the Global Alliance of Eye Bank Associations for their ethical stance and for taking measures to try to ensure that donated ocular material has been ethically procured. Barcelona Principle 9 regarding research and publication specifies a high standard, and if followed, would help to guarantee ethical practice in published research from the eye bank sector. It would be interesting to hear of examples of good practice where researchers have taken steps to verify the provenance of tissues from particular eye banks, and also to hear of any mechanisms adopted by journals to confirm that research was performed only on ethically procured materials. Have any instances of unethical practice been identified?
  We hope that this initiative by the eye banking community to ensure high ethical standards will serve as an example to other areas of organ and tissue procurement. Any publication of research on unethically procured human materials undermines trust in the organ and tissue sector, taints the literature, and facilitates ongoing harm to those whose tissues and organs are procured without consent.

  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

  • Back to top
• Published on: 7 May 2019

  Contested organ-obtainment methods in published transplant-research: A timely reminder to those in the affiliated ocular field.

  • Heather Machin, Nurse Global Alliance of Eye Bank Associations

  We reflect on the Rogers et al, [1] paper, published in BMJ Open, which examined the contested ethical compliance of published transplant research, using human organ donors in China, and the call to retract over 400 published papers.
  Seeing that Rogers et al. did not examine other substances of human origin, such as ocular tissue, and only examined the donation conduct of one nation with contested donation practices, we are left wondering if our own eye health and vision science sector, at the global level, would withstand such rigor, if a similar examination of ocular tissue use was conducted. Could our sector be swept up in such controversy, and would that controversy be isolated to one nation? Would our activities and practices, our global research collaborations and our transnational movement of human tissue leave our sector open to scrutiny? Would it challenge the validity of our transplant research in our sub-specialty journals, or discourage governments, investors and philanthropic stakeholders and organizations from engaging with the eye health and vision science sector, regardless of the nation or the degree of contestable activity?
  Rogers et al., further highlight the need for sectorial compliance with bioethical principles, and the responsibilities of academic editorial boards to confirm the origins and acquisition practices of submitted transplant research that involves human donors, and particularly those concerning deceased donors.
  To that...

  Show More

  We reflect on the Rogers et al, [1] paper, published in BMJ Open, which examined the contested ethical compliance of published transplant research, using human organ donors in China, and the call to retract over 400 published papers.
  Seeing that Rogers et al. did not examine other substances of human origin, such as ocular tissue, and only examined the donation conduct of one nation with contested donation practices, we are left wondering if our own eye health and vision science sector, at the global level, would withstand such rigor, if a similar examination of ocular tissue use was conducted. Could our sector be swept up in such controversy, and would that controversy be isolated to one nation? Would our activities and practices, our global research collaborations and our transnational movement of human tissue leave our sector open to scrutiny? Would it challenge the validity of our transplant research in our sub-specialty journals, or discourage governments, investors and philanthropic stakeholders and organizations from engaging with the eye health and vision science sector, regardless of the nation or the degree of contestable activity?
  Rogers et al., further highlight the need for sectorial compliance with bioethical principles, and the responsibilities of academic editorial boards to confirm the origins and acquisition practices of submitted transplant research that involves human donors, and particularly those concerning deceased donors.
  To that end, we in the global eye banking sector wish to highlight the proactive activities of the Global Alliance of Eye Bank Association, and in particular, the 2018 bioethical framework, The Barcelona Principles: An Agreement on the Use of Human Donated Tissue for Ocular Transplantation, Research, and Future Technologies, [2]. This framework was ratified by all six-member associations of the Global Alliance. Among other principles, the framework calls for scientific journals and publications to conduct ethical checks, inclusive of donor origin and supply line.
  Developed by the eye bank and ophthalmic communities, The Barcelona Principles is inspired and underpinned by a wide-range of guiding documents and statements, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, and their Statement on Organ and Tissue Donation; The Council for International Organizations of Medical Science’s International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans 2016; the World Health Organization’s 2010 Guiding principles on human cell, tissue, and organ transplantation - WHA63.22.
  The Barcelona Principles provide guidance on the consent and use of ocular tissue in transplantation and research. In particular, Principle 9 (outlined below) highlights the sector’s expectations for research and publication.
  Principle 9: Ensure ethical practice and governance of research (non-therapeutic) requiring cells tissue and organs (CTO).
  i. Ensure consent for research
  ii. Provide tissue to research and technical development projects where all parties demonstrate ethically sound practices and processes
  iii. Ensure any intended research for which CTO is requested has been designed, and will be conducted, in accordance with jurisdictional law, and regulations that govern the ethical use of human tissue (inclusive of the Declaration of Helsinki/ International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans),
  a. obtain approval from a qualified human research ethics committee
  b. work with scientific journals and peer associations/societies to promulgate scientific standards that honour the ethical consent of CTO for research
  iv. Researchers should verify that the eye bank providing the tissue has appropriate credentials, policies and practices, and is transparent and open to scrutiny (e.g., demonstrating their ethical consent process for obtaining and allocating CTO for research or further attenuation/commercialisation)
  v. Scientific journals should establish a mechanism to confirm research is conducted on ethically obtained CTO.

  The work of Rogers et al. provides a timely reminder to our sector, to reassess our activities and practices. We support their call for scientific journals and publications to require ethical credentials of any submissions involving donated ocular tissue (for therapeutic and non-therapeutic use) and to require verification of the origin of donated substances of human origin as a universal requirement for all nations and donation-allocation systems.

  Thank you
  Heather Machin
  Representative on behalf of the Global Alliance of Eye Bank Associations

  Reference:
  1 Rogers W, Robertson MP, Ballantyne A, et al. Compliance with ethical standards in the reporting of donor sources and ethics review in peer-reviewed publications involving organ transplantation in China: a scoping review. BMJ Open. 2019. Accessed 18 April 2019. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/2/e024473
  2 The Barcelona Principles: An Agreement on the Use of Human Donated Tissue for Ocular Transplantation, Research, and Future Technologies. Global Alliance of Eye Bank Associations. Cornea. 2018 Oct;37(10):1213-1217. https://journals.lww.com/corneajrnl/Abstract/2018/10000/The_Barcelona_Pr...

  Show Less

  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

  • Back to top