In an increasingly litigious society where ritual demands for accountability and "taking responsibility" are now commonplace, it is not surprising that members of clinical ethics committees (CECs) are becoming more aware of their potential legal liability. Yet the vulnerability of committee members to legal action is difficult to assess with any certainty. This is because the CECs which have be...

Currently, research ethics committees (RECs) in the UK meet behind closed doors-their workings and most of the content of their decisions are unavailable to the general public. There is a significant tension between this current practice and a broader societal presumption of openness. As a form of public institution, the REC system exists to oversee research from the perspective of society gene...

One role of research ethics committees (RECs) is to assess the ethics of proposed health research. In some countries, RECs are also instructed to assess its legality. However, in other countries they are explicitly instructed not to do so. In this paper, I defend the claim that public policy should instruct RECs not to assess the legality of proposed research ("the Claim"). I initially defend a...

Recent guidelines from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandate the inclusion of adequate numbers of women in clinical trials. Ought such standards to apply internationally? Walzer's theory of justice is brought to bear on the problem, the first use of the theory in research ethics, and it argues for broad application of the principle of adequate representation. A number of practical ...

Since 1997 British studies involving five or more centres have required approval from both a multicentre research ethics committee and the local research ethics committee for each centre. A local committee can reject the protocol for local reasons but cannot amend it. Some researchers have criticised the process of obtaining ethical approval for multicentre studies, but little is known about th...

Ever since the emergence of the field of research ethics, concerns have existed about the possibility that regulation of research might “cripple”, if not eliminate, research in important fields (Beecher 1959). In recent years research ethics review has been accused of impeding basic and translational research and of being responsible for driving medical research from the industrialised West to ...

BACKGROUND The increasing emphasis on research, development and innovation for health in providing solutions to the high burden of diseases in the African Region has warranted a proliferation of studies including clinical trials. This changing public health landscape requires that countries develop adequate ethics review capacities to protect and minimize risks to study participants. Therefore,...

This paper argues that recent ethics research guidelines fit poorly onto the kinds of research undertaken in the humanities, where a research conversation often forms a distinctive method of investigation that has no scientific equivalent. The NH&MRC ethics guidelines pay little attention to the issues raised in humanities and social science research. Also, ethics committees are constituted pri...

Increasing European co-operation must take place in many areas, including medical ethics. Against the background of common cultural norms and pluralistic variation within political traditions, religion and lifestyles, Europe will have to converge towards unity within the field of medical ethics. This article examines how such convergence might develop with respect to four major areas: European ...