Federal Act
on Research involving Human Beings
(Human Research Act, HRA)

¹ A re­search pro­ject with an ex­pec­ted dir­ect be­ne­fit may be car­ried out in emer­gency situ­ations if:

a.

the ne­ces­sary meas­ures have been taken so that the wishes of the per­son con­cerned can be de­term­ined as soon as pos­sible;

b.

the per­son con­cerned does not vis­ibly ex­press op­pos­i­tion to the re­search in­ter­ven­tion through either verbally or by his or her be­ha­viour; and

c.

a phys­i­cian who is not par­ti­cip­at­ing in the re­search pro­ject is called in to safe­guard the in­terests of the per­son con­cerned be­fore he or she is in­volved in the pro­ject; in ex­cep­tion­al cases, where there are good reas­ons for do­ing so, the phys­i­cian may be called in at a later stage.

² A re­search pro­ject with no ex­pec­ted dir­ect be­ne­fit may be car­ried out in emer­gency situ­ations if, in ad­di­tion to the re­quire­ments spe­cified in para­graph 1:

a.

it en­tails no more than min­im­al risks and bur­dens; and

b.

it can be ex­pec­ted to yield sub­stan­tial find­ings which could in the long term be be­ne­fi­cial for per­sons with the same dis­ease or dis­order, or in the same situ­ation.