BMJ  2005;331 (3 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7515.0-g

Editor's choice

Uncomfortable findings

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

What makes it worthwhile and possible to do a randomised controlled trial (RCT)? Here are some things: an important question without a definitive answer, scientific equipoise, feasibility, and funding. Not listed here, for obvious reasons, is whether the trial will come up with an acceptable answer. This week's BMJ presents several RCTs—including a well performed trial of flocculant-disinfectant for purifying water in rural Kenya (p 478). The trial is funded by the producer of the disinfectant but with the necessary safeguards against non-publication should the trial have failed to show that the product works. But should fears about the outcome of a trial ever prevent a trial from being done?

Here, for example, is a question ripe for testing in an RCT: is elective caesarean section as safe as vaginal birth? Or to put it another way, should a woman be free to choose to have a caesarean . . . [Full text of this article]

Fiona Godlee, editor

(fgodlee@bmj.com)


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Relevant Articles

Household based treatment of drinking water with flocculant-disinfectant for preventing diarrhoea in areas with turbid source water in rural western Kenya: cluster randomised controlled trial
John A Crump, Peter O Otieno, Laurence Slutsker, Bruce H Keswick, Daniel H Rosen, R Michael Hoekstra, John M Vulule, and Stephen P Luby
BMJ 2005 331: 478. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Could a randomised trial answer the controversy relating to elective caesarean section? National survey of consultant obstetricians and heads of midwifery
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