BMJ  2007;334 (24 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39133.472199.43

Editor's Choice

Editor's choice

Ethics at the BMJ

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

One of the BMJ's assets is its ethics committee. The committee meets every three months to provide the editor with broad ethical guidance and consider ethical dilemmas arising from articles submitted to and commissioned by the journal. Chaired by Iona Heath (a GP, ethicist, and BMJ columnist (BMJ 2007;334:341 doi: 10.1136/bmj.39125.448287.59)), its members are appointed after open application and competitive interview. Rather than publishing the minutes of the meeting, which presented problems of confidentiality, we now publish an annual report (http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/about-bmj/ethics-committee).

In the report for 2005 (2006 is coming shortly), Liz Wager describes the issues raised by the year's 11 new cases. Several cases raised the perennial question of what constitutes research rather than innovative practice or audit. Should the use of unlicensed treatments require prior approval from a research ethics committee or institutional review board? The ethics committee judged that it should. These cases . . . [Full text of this article]

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