ETHICS AND HEALTH CARE: ROLE OF UK ETHICS C'TEE

The protective role of local research ethics committees would be vastly strengthened if health authorities were required to appoint, train and service them, and were empowered to monitor the research which they approve, according to a recent report from the UK-based King's Fund Institute, a center for health policy analysis.

Guidelines which govern health service research ethics committees were published by the UK's Ministry of Health as part of the Citizen's Charter last August. However, the message from the KFI's report, entitled Ethics and Health Care, is that these lack teeth and cannot ensure that citizens are genuinely protected from unethical research.

It contends that the evidence that some committees do not abide by the guidelines, nor accept that they should, is overwhelming. So too is the clear picture of well-intentioned people being distinctly vague as to what the task in hand is, and whether they are in fact research committees or research ethics committees. At the same time, the report admits, there is much good practice, but other research ethics committees do not know about it because there is no communication between members and administrators of committees throughout the UK.