Questions have been raised about whether and how health care quality improvement (QI) initiatives ought to be reviewed to address possible ethical issues associated with them. These questions have focused primarily on whether some QI initiatives meet the regulatory criteria for human subject research and should therefore be regulated and reviewed as such. Based on surveys of health care system ...

The death of Jesse Gelsinger in 1999 during a gene therapy trial raised many questions about the ethical review of medical research. Here, the author argues that the principle of justice is interpreted too narrowly and receives insufficient emphasis and that what we permit in terms of bodily invasion affects the value we place on individuals. Medical research is a societally supported activity....

BACKGROUND UK-based research conducted within a healthcare setting generally requires approval from the National Research Ethics Service. Research ethics committees are required to assess a vast range of proposals, differing in both their topic and methodology. We argue the methodological benchmarks with which research ethics committees are generally familiar and which form the basis of assessm...

BACKGROUND In 2008 UK legislation was amended to enable the use of deferred consent for paediatric emergency care (EC) trials in recognition of the practical and ethical difficulties of obtaining prospective consent in an emergency situation. However, ambiguity about how to make deferred consent acceptable to parents, children and practitioners remains. In particular, little is known about prac...

Jack A. Gilbert,1* Dawn Field,2 Paul Swift,2 Lindsay Newbold,2 Anna Oliver,2 Tim Smyth,1 Paul J. Somerfield,1 Sue Huse3 and Ian Joint1 Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, Plymouth, PL1 3DH, UK. NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, CEH Oxford, Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3SR, UK. Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution, Marine Biological Laboratory, Wo...

Research and ethics are inseparable. Based on abhorrent research abuses under the cloak of scientific enquiry, development of the process for the ethical overview of research on/with humans was undertaken. By the end of the twentieth century, sufficient and extensive local and international principles, guidelines, legislations, and treaties about research on humans were in place, with all human...

BACKGROUND Submission of study protocols to research ethics committees (RECs) constitutes one of the earliest stages at which planned trials are documented in detail. Previous studies have investigated the amendments requested from researchers by RECs, but the type of issues raised during REC review have not been compared by sponsor type. The objective of this study was to identify recurring sh...

The relationship between ammonia emissions from a poultry farm and soil NO and N2O fluxes from a downwind source U. Skiba, J. Dick, R. Storeton-West, S. Fernades-Lopez, C. Wood, S. Tang, and N. van Dijk Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) Edinburgh, Bush Estate, Penicuik, Midlothian EH26 0QB, UK Dpto. Quı́mica y Análisis Agŕıcola-E.T.S.I. Agrónomos de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria s/n, 28040 M...

in the last few years, medical education policy makers have expressed concern about changes in the ethical attitude and behavior of medical trainees during the course of their education. they claim that newly graduated physicians (mds) are entering residency years with inappropriate habits and attitudes earned during their education. this allegation has been supported by numerous research on th...

considering the nature of qualitative studies, the interaction between researchers and participants can be ethically challenging for the former, as they are personally involved in different stages of the study. therefore, formulation of specific ethical guidelines in this respect seems to be essential. the present paper aimed to discuss the necessity to develop explicit guidelines for conductin...