BMJ  2004;329 (31 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7460.0-g

Editor's choice

My last choice

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Do you need approval from an ethics committee to ring up chief executives of hospitals and ask them questions? As a journalist, a member of parliament, or a confidence trickster you wouldn't, but if you are a researcher who has drawn up a protocol you might. Ethics committees, which were devised to protect vulnerable patients from some abuse, have forgotten why they were created and have begun to equate chief executives with the unconscious or the mentally incompetent. They have, in other words, spun out of control.

No fewer than five sets of researchers describe a series of Kafkaesque experiences with ethics committees that have made research difficult or impossible (p 277, p 280, p 282, p 286, and p 288), and an editorial analyses other barriers to research (p 241). We commissioned only the editorial; the other pieces arrived spontaneously, reflecting . . . [Full text of this article]

Richard Smith, editor

(rsmith@bmj.com)


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Clinical research under the cosh again
Charles Warlow
BMJ 2004 329: 241-242. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Obstacles to conducting epidemiological research in the UK general population
Hester J T Ward, Simon N Cousens, Blaire Smith-Bathgate, Margaret Leitch, Dawn Everington, Robert G Will, and Peter G Smith
BMJ 2004 329: 277-279. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

The other face of research governance
Alysun M Jones and Bryony Bamford
BMJ 2004 329: 280-281. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Bureaucracy of ethics applications
David S Wald
BMJ 2004 329: 282-284. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Research ethics paperwork: what is the plot we seem to have lost?
Konrad Jamrozik
BMJ 2004 329: 286-287. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Ethical review of research into rare genetic disorders
M Parker, R Ashcroft, A O M Wilkie, and A Kent
BMJ 2004 329: 288-289. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

We have no control
Neville W Goodman
bmj.com, 30 Jul 2004 [Full text]
Ride more than thou goest
John Hoey
bmj.com, 30 Jul 2004 [Full text]
Ethics Committees should facilitate research
Dr.Naseem A. Qureshi MD, IMAPA, LMIPS
bmj.com, 1 Aug 2004 [Full text]
Medical journals should collaborate with research ethics committees
Kayvan Shokrollahi
bmj.com, 3 Aug 2004 [Full text]
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ