The 2009 edition of the International Compilation of Human Subject Protections recently has been released and is now available online. The document can be seen at: http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/international/HSPCompilation.pdf.

This resource includes about 1,100 laws, regulations, and guidelines on human subject protections from 92 different countries. This year’s Compilation includes numerous additions and updates to the 2008 Edition, and features the laws, regulations, and/or guidelines from seven new countries: Burma, Egypt, the Gambia, San Marino, South Korea, the Sudan, and Vietnam.

The listings are organized into categories by rows (general, drugs, privacy/data protection, human biological materials, genetic, and embryos/stem cells/cloning) and columns (key organizations, legislation, regulations, and guidelines). Many of the listings include web addresses, allowing the reader to link directly to the laws, regulations, or guidelines of interest.

Prepared by the Office for Human Research Protections of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Compilation is designed for use by IRBs, researchers, sponsors, and others involved in human subjects research around the world. Using this Compilation, these groups can familiarize themselves with the laws, regulations, and guidelines where the research will be conducted, to assure those standards are followed appropriately.