For thousands of years humans have become ill and for the same amount of time people have tried to cure them. In so doing, early medical practitioners intentionally or unintentionally carried out biomedical research.

Biomedical research is indispensable for extending our knowledge of health and disease and thus improving the quality of human life. Such research inevitably requires the involvement of human subjects. However, the use of people in research opens the door to potential danger and exploitation, particularly of the poor, less educated and more vulnerable members of society. Furthermore, the immense technological advances that have been made in medicine since the 20th century have given rise to ethical issues never before faced, such as organ transplantation, in vitro fertilization, the beginning and end of the human life and cloning. While all cultures without doubt share the belief that it is imperative to have mechanisms in place to protect individuals from the dangers in biomedical research and exploitation and to consider the ethical implications of technological advances, different cultures will inevitably have different perspectives on the issues.

Recognition of the profound ethical questions raised by biomedical research and the need to address them led to the establishment in October 2004 of the Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture in the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation, Karachi. This institute, the first of its kind in Pakistan, aspires to promote education and research in biomedical ethics, to act as an academic and intellectual resource for Pakistan and the region, and to contribute to international bioethical activities and discourse.

The papers published in this supplement of EMHJ on biomedical research were all presented at the conference organized by the Centre in November 2005 entitled Fundamentals of research ethics: international and regional perspectives. The conference aimed to familiarize medical researchers, healthcare professionals, administrators, research sponsors and government policy-makers about the risks to research subjects, and how these can be minimized. The speakers, all eminent scholars in the field of ethics, came from across the globe to contribute to this important meeting

We would like to express our sincere thanks to Professor Farhat Moazam of the Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture for her unstinting efforts to coordinate and facilitate the production of this supplement.

We hope that our readers will find much to interest and stimulate in this valuable issue.