Ethics and ethics committees: HIV serosurveillance in Scotland.

Ethics and ethics committees: HIV serosurveillance in Scotland.

Knowledge of the heterosexual spread of HIV is needed to plan future health-care needs. In December 1989 we gained approval and finance for unlinked anonymous testing of neonatal Guthrie card samples in Scotland. Local ethics committee approval was required before testing could start. Twenty ethics committees were approached in the 15 Scottish health board areas. Nineteen of the committees have...

Ethics committees and ethics consultants

Ethics committee and ethics consultants are among the more interesting phenomena associated with bioethics. Although in some respects both reach back to the ancient origins of medical ethics, in other ways they are reflections of a ‘postmodern’ society that seeks moral resolutions while remaining agnostic about substantive moral absolutes. In the present article I shall describe the history of ...

Developing clinical ethics committees.

Formal clinical ethics review first developed in the USA and most hospitals there have structures in place. This is often a clinical ethics committee. Developments have been slower in the UK, where there has been uncertainty and variability about the role of clinical ethics committees. Even in the USA, their exact role is uncertain. Although we now have a good idea of the mechanisms for ethical...

HIV screening in 'healthy' volunteers and Ethics Committees.

In a recent article in the Journal, Thomson et al. [1] pointed out the interest of screening healthy volunteers to prevent subjects with HIV infection from entering clinical trials, and to protect research personnel in the manipulation of blood samples often taken in these studies. His paper is an excellent example of how researchers have to deal, nowadays, with ancillary aspects of the design ...

Ethical ethics committees?