Clinical research under the cosh again

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7460.241

BMJ 2004;329:241-242 (31 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7460.241

Editorial

Clinical research under the cosh again

This time it is ethics committees

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

Today the BMJ publishes a clutch of papers on the regulationof clinical research by ethics committees.^1-5 All describe,in one way or another, how ethics committee review may impedeand delay research, sometimes even to distort the methods somuch that the conclusions are flawed and patients damaged—anunintended unethical consequence.

Although this is not just a problem in the United Kingdom, toknow exactly what is going on in other countries is difficult.If the situation is anything like that in the United Kingdomit will be confusing, changing all the time (just last monththe UK government notably altered its human tissue bill), andmade even more confusing by varying guidance from official bodiessuch as the General Medical Council and the BMA. Clearly, internationaldifferences are a particular problem for multicentre researchacross national boundaries. For example, unlike in the UnitedKingdom, the United States has . . . [Full text of this article]

Charles Warlow, professor

Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Western General Hospital, Crewe Road, Edinburgh EH4 2XU (charles.warlow@ed.ac.uk)

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Angell, E, Dixon-Woods, M (2009). Do research ethics committees identify process errors in applications for ethical approval?. J. Med. Ethics 35: 130-132 [Abstract] [Full text]
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