Published 10 December 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2918
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2918

Letters

Regulation’s threat to research

Research is no longer attractive

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

My experiences include a six month delay following an ethics amendment in which we requested approval to take 10 blood samples from healthy subjects. Bearing in mind the whole study took one morning to complete, this seemed disproportionate. My last three grants have taken more than a year from award to full approval, leading to the embarrassing situation of the first year’s annual report in which our achievements are listed as "ethics and R&D approval obtained."

We, too, have been subject to inconsistent decisions¹—for example, one ethics committee agreed to our subjects self administering growth hormone for 28 days at home while another declined allowing subjects to give even a single injection at home, when this was more convenient for the subject.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to attract to research, fellows and students who have become increasingly disheartened as their first experience of research turns into one of . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ University of Southampton

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