A draft law on medical research involving the human person in Cameroon was tabled in the National Assembly yesterday 29 March for consideration and adoption.
Cameroon wants to apply criminal sanctions to crooked sponsors of clinical trials. This is a law on medical research involving the human person in Cameroon. The text of 72 articles aims to ensure "the protection of research participants throughout the processes of research on human diseases, especially in the context of clinical trials and interventional studies," it is learned.
To this end, anyone who carries out a medical research project without having informed the participants of their rights, modalities and risks of the research will be punished. The law provides for imprisonment of one to five years and a fine of 10 million to 50 million CFA francs. The same criminal sanction applies where the project promoter has not obtained the consent of the person concerned or that of other persons, authorities designated to authorise the research and where the prior consent has been withdrawn.
In addition, "A person who clons human embryos for research purposes shall be punished by life imprisonment"; "one who genetically improves an embryo" and "one who creates transgenic or chimeric embryos".
Eighteen years after the Scandal of the Tenofovir clinical trial, Cameroon wants to toughen the sanctions through this law. As a reminder, in 2004, the trial of a preventive treatment against AIDS is conducted on 400 prostitutes in Douala. Funded by the American NGO Family Health International (FHI) of computer tycoon Bill Gates, the project violated the ethical rules of biomedical research. Recently, several therapeutic clinical trials against Covid19 have been conducted on Cameroonian territory without any real control.
