Informed consent in medical research

Abstract

# Doctors are arrogant to think they need to debate issue of patient consent {#article-title-2} Editor—The editorial by Richard Smith raised the issue of publishing studies in which the researchers did not seek patients' consent.1 Firstly, I would think that of all the professions, only in medicine would there be any sort of debate about whether people need to be told that they, their bodies, their body fluids, their emotions, or whatever were to be subjects of research. This is arrogance on the part of doctors. Has anyone thought of asking these “patients” what their opinions are? Secondly, I also think that doctors in developing countries need to be especially careful about obtaining consent from patients for anything, not only research. I would like to know that when I read a paper from a developing country in the BMJ , I can be sure that the individuals on whom the research was done had given informed consent. 1. 1.↵1. Smith R . Informed consent: the intricacies BMJ 1997;314:1059#60. (12 April.) [OpenUrl][1][FREE Full Text][2] # No one has a monopoly on deciding what is ethical {#article-title-4} Editor—Having just come to the end of my term as chairman of our local research ethics committee, I would like to contribute to the debate on informed consent. I have no doubt that informed consent should be obtained in virtually all research studies. The difficulty comes in those rare instances when the need to obtain informed consent may be waived. Len Doyal has made a thoughtful and useful contribution to the debate,1 but it is interesting that, whereas I would have said that the study by Satish Bhagwanjee and colleagues qualified under his suggestions,2 he seems to imply that it would not. The commentaries of Rajendra Kale and Sheila McLean were critical of the two studies published in the BMJ , 2 3 but they failed to address the specific issues raised by the trials and resorted instead to vague generalisations. Neither was prepared to consider seriously the harm that can be done by not … [1]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DBMJ%26rft.stitle%253DBMJ%26rft.issn%253D0007-1447%26rft.aulast%253DSmith%26rft.auinit1%253DR.%26rft.volume%253D314%26rft.issue%253D7087%26rft.spage%253D1059%26rft.epage%253D1059%26rft.atitle%253DInformed%2Bconsent%253A%2Bthe%2Bintricacies%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Apmid%252F9162269%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [2]: /lookup/ijlink?linkType=FULL&journalCode=bmj&resid=314/7087/1059&atom=%2Fbmj%2F314%2F7092%2F1477.atom