Local research ethics committees
- 9 September 1995
- Vol. 311 (7006), 639-640
- https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.311.7006.639
Abstract
The main drive to the formation of ethics committees in Britain came from the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki1 and the publication of Pappworth's The Human Guinea Pig.2 The British Medical Research Council reported in 1963 on the responsibility of researchers for the wellbeing of their subjects, and in 1967 the Royal College of Physicians recommended that all research should be subjected to ethical review.3 In 1968 the Department of Health recommended that hospitals should establish ethics review boards but on an informal basis. Guidelines on how they should function appeared from the royal college in 1984 and in 1989 from the Department of Health.4 But it was not until 1991 that the Department of Health formally required every health district to have a local research ethics committee and gave more detailed guidance on the composition of these committees and how they should function.5Keywords
This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit:
- Ethics committees: impediments to research or guardians of ethical standards?BMJ, 1995
- Cross district comparison of applications to research ethics committeesBMJ, 1995
- Ethics approval for a national postal survey: recent experienceBMJ, 1995
- Why do research ethics committees disagree with each other?1995
- Are ethical committees reliable?1995
- Local research ethics committees. Widely differing responses to a national survey protocol.1994
- Better research ethics committees: comments on guidance from the Department of Health and the European Community.1993
- Diversity in the practice of district ethics committees.BMJ, 1989
- World Medical Association Meets in HelsinkiBMJ, 1964