Review of ethical aspects in biomedical research. The experience of the Ethics Committee of the Center for Toxic Oil Syndrome and Rare Diseases [CISATER]

This Field Note aims to make known the decisions taken by the Ethics Committee of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III for Toxic Oil Syndrome regarding the secondary use of research specimens in biological research when informed consent is lacking. This is a common concern in the field of biomedical research. After debating the ethical suitability of the secondary use of these samples, our main conclusion is that researchers conducting prospective studies should expressly solicit written informed consent from participants in the study about i) whether there will or could be any secondary use of the samples and, if so, ii) whether such secondary use would be conditional on the type of research.