Article Text
Abstract
In a recent issue of Journal of Medical Ethics (JME), we discussed the ethical review of evaluations of interventions that would occur whether or not the evaluation was taking place. We concluded that standard research ethics frameworks including the Ottawa Statement, which requires justification for all aspects of an intervention and its roll-out, were a poor guide in this area. We proposed that a consideration of researcher responsibility, based on the consequences of the research taking place, would be a more appropriate way delineate the scope of research ethics review. Weijer and Taljaard present a counterargument to our proposal, which we address in this reply. They claim that a focus on researcher responsibility will weaken the protection of research participants and link it to ‘unethical research’ and a ‘government experimenting on its own people’. However, the moral responsibility of researchers is defined in terms of the consequences of the research on human welfare and harm, not in opposition to it. Weijer and Taljaard argue that researchers must justify what they are studying whether or not they have any control over it and that governments must justify their programmes, including by demonstrating equipoise, to a research ethics committee if they implement them in a randomised way. We strongly disagree that this is a defensible way to define the scope of research ethics review and argue that this provides no further protections to research participants beyond what we propose, but places a potential barrier to learning from government programmes.
- research ethics
- policy guidelines/Inst review boards/review cttes
- clinical trials
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Twitter @siwatson
Contributors SIW comprised the first draft of this reply. SIW, MD-W and RJL revised the reply and agreed on a final version.
Funding This study was funded by Wellcome Trust National Institute for Health Research.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
Linked Articles
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Ottawa Statement does not impede randomised evaluation of government health programmes
- Thinking clearly about the FIRST trial: addressing ethical challenges in cluster randomised trials of policy interventions involving health providers
- Against the use and publication of contemporary unethical research: the case of Chinese transplant research
- Informed consent in cluster randomised trials: a guide for the perplexed
- The Ottawa Statement on the ethical design and conduct of cluster randomised trials: précis for researchers and research ethics committees
- Ethical issues raised by cluster randomised trials conducted in low-resource settings: identifying gaps in the Ottawa Statement through an analysis of the PURE Malawi trial
- Is the UN receiving ethical approval for its research with human participants?
- Streamlining the Clinical Research Enterprise
- Health policy and systems research: towards a better understanding and review of ethical issues
- Ethical and legal considerations in video recording neonatal resuscitations