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
Tina Lavender, Carol Kingdon, Anna Hart, Gill Gyte, Mark Gabbay, and James P Neilson
BMJ 2005 331: 490-491. [Full Text] [PDF]

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