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Letter

Ethics review in research

Ethics committees are risk averse

EDITOR—Hearnshaw and Glasziou and Chalmers have made points I would have made myself had my time not been taken with writing ethics applications.^{1 2}

I am currently coordinating a qualitative investigation into the attitudes of Asian families to child and adolescent mental health problems and services. Because the research involves service users, non-patient members of the community, children, and adults I have been required to make full submissions to three ethics committees, one university and two NHS. Despite the fact that the research had received very positive peer review from one of the top medical sociologists in the United Kingdom, each committee criticised the design or quality of the methods and required fairly substantial clarifications and alterations to patient information. For example, one committee required that I lengthen the children's information sheet to bring it into line with the guidelines of the Central Office for Research Committees (COREC) (http://www.corec.org.uk/), while another said it was "too wordy" and required me to shorten it.

Meanwhile, our local health board is carrying out a similar focus group study without need for ethics approval because it is seen as "user involvement," is not hypothesis driven, and will not be published in the research literature.

Although I can see the need for a research governance framework, the current guidelines seem to have produced a climate of risk aversion without any weighing of possible benefits to patients. In my area, research by busy clinicians and by students on time limited MSc programmes is all but grinding to a halt because the ethics barrier is seen as insurmountable. This is yet another example of clinical academia being strangled at its roots.

Helen J Minnis, senior lecturer in child and adolescent psychiatry

Child Psychiatry, Section of Psychological Medicine, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G3 8SJ h.minnis{at}clinmed.gla.ac.uk

References

1. Hearnshaw H. Comparison of requirements of research ethics committees in 11 European countries for a non-invasive interventional study. BMJ 2004;328: 140-1. (17 January.)[CrossRef][ISI][Medline]
2. Glasziou P, Chalmers I. Ethics review roulette: what can we learn? BMJ 2004;328: 121-2. (17 January.)[CrossRef][ISI][Medline]

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