Commentary: Consent and confidentiality in publishing—the view of the BMJ’s ethics committee

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1232

From trainee to consultant, BMJ Group offers doctors around the world tailored information, special events, learning resources and recruitment services at every step along their career path.

... by doctors, for doctors, for patients
We are open for entries!

Online learning

BMJ Learning

High-quality CME / CPD for doctors and other healthcare professionals. BMJ Learning features hundreds of accredited, peer-reviewed learning modules in text, video, and audio formats. Find out more

Courses and Qualifications

BMJ Masterclasses

BMJ Masterclasses, led by experts, help clinicians to use the latest evidence and recent guidelines in practice and meet their CPD/CME requirements. Find out more

Exam Preparation

The leading provider of online exam preparation, helping over 167,000 healthcare professionals to pass their exams. Find out more

onExamination

Search all BMJ comment articles:

From

Limit by

Our online table of contents is updated at least twice each day. Read all articles published in the last 7 days.
Keep up to date with cardiology: Access the latest cardiovascular medicine resources from across BMJ Group.
The BMJ iPad app brings you the best of print and online, including live links to the latest news, blogs, video, and podcasts. Get the BMJ iPad app.
OPEN ACCESS: All research articles are freely available online, with no word limit. Find out more about the BMJ's open access policy. Submit your paper.
Countdown to London 2012: BMJ Group's Olympics portal highlights latest Olympics and sports medicine-themed research, comment and learning

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

Ainsley J Newson, senior lecturer in biomedical ethics1,
Julian Sheather, deputy head of medical ethics2

¹Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS6 6AU
²British Medical Association, BMA House, London

Correspondence to: A J Newson ainsley.newson{at}bristol.ac.uk

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 (doi 10.1136/bmj.a1231); 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. 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.

We explain here the response of the BMJ’s ethics committee to the case study submitted by Isaacs and colleagues and make some broader points about the need for patient consent to publish case studies. We conclude that the “public interest” criterion for publication justifiably has a high threshold, which was not met by this paper. Yet we recognise that policy formation in this contested area can be difficult and that further debate is required.

The publication of case studies in medical journals provides a rich narrative of clinical practice with valuable lessons for other practitioners and has extended ethical debates, suggested …