OBJECTIVES To report the outcome of applications to 43 research ethics committees. SETTING Four regional health authorities in England. FINDINGS The research ethics committees varied considerably in their practices. The time lapse until notification of the outcome of the approval ranged from just under one week to 23 weeks with a mean of 8.6 weeks. Four research ethics committees failed to ...

background: the increased recognition of ethical problems has contributed to the resurgence of ethics in relation to health care, and to the emergence of medical ethics as a new collaborative discipline in the world. the growing trends in biomedical technologies have been associated with increasing discussions about ethical aspects of the new knowledge in different societies. advances in geneti...