The United Kingdom has many bodies that play their part in carrying out the work of national ethics committees, but its nearest equivalent of a U.S. presidential bioethics commission is the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, established in 1991. The Council is charged with examining ethical questions raised by developments in biological and medical research, publishing reports, and making represent...

For some time, clinical ethics committees (CECs) have been a prominent feature of hospitals in North America. Such committees are less common in the United Kingdom and Europe. Focusing on the UK, this paper evaluates why CECs have taken so long to evolve and assesses the roles that they should play in health care policy and clinical decision making. Substantive and procedural moral issues in me...

This issue of the journal sees a number of exchanges on significant ethical problems. ‘Nudges’ have attracted a good deal of attention recently in the context of the ethics of public health interventions. Martin Wilkinson (see page 486) writes a guest editorial introducing important debate on Yashar Saghai’s featured article, Salvaging the concept of nudge (see page 487, Editor’s choice). Also,...

In this article, the question is discussed if and how Healthcare Ethics Committees (HECs) should be regulated. The paper consists of two parts. First, authors from eight EC member countries describe the status quo in their respective countries, and give reasons as to the form of regulation they consider most adequate. In the second part, the country reports are analysed. It is suggested that re...

audit works we might expect an improvement when comparing 1990 with the 1987 report. Direct comparison is often difficult and infrequently made by the authors. Necropsy rates have risen from 35% to 47%, although necropsy reports were considered to be poor in 25% of cases and reached the right doctors in only 75%. The proportion of patients examined by a consultant surgeon before operation did n...

Hospital ethics committees (HECs) help clinicians deal with the ethical challenges which have been raised during clinical practice. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to provide a historical background of the development of HECs internationally and describe their functions and practical challenges of their day to day work. This is the first part of a comprehensive literature review...

Solomon Benatar In response to the case study by Kass et al. on research ethics committees (RECs) in Africa [1], the following additional information is provided about capacity building for research ethics in South Africa. South Africa has two programs funded by the Fogarty International Center: the International Research Ethics Network for Southern Africa (IRENSA; see http:⁄⁄www.irensa. org) b...

Solomon Benatar In response to the case study by Kass et al. on research ethics committees (RECs) in Africa [1], the following additional information is provided about capacity building for research ethics in South Africa. South Africa has two programs funded by the Fogarty International Center: the International Research Ethics Network for Southern Africa (IRENSA; see http:⁄⁄www.irensa. org) b...