Two years ago four paediatricians and an ethicist submitted to the BMJ a case study as an ethical debate which the BMJ decided not to publish because the authors had not obtained the consent of the patient’s parents for publication. The authors submitted it elsewhere, and the article was published last year.

Here the authors explain why they think the BMJ should have published despite the lack of consent; the editor of the journal that did publish the case study explains why he did so (doi: 10.1136/bmj.a1233); and two members of the BMJ’s ethics committee explain why they recommended not to publish it (doi: 10.1136/bmj.a1232). An accompanying editorial explains why English law would now not allow the BMJ to publish it without consent, even if we thought it reasonable to do so.