ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the views of someone who is neither an ethicist, nor currently a member of an ethical committee, but who is nevertheless someone who can act as an interested lay person and raise some important questions which require answers. Such questions have been prompted by my experience as a clinician, from editing a bulletin (Drugs and Therapeutics Bulletin) and from my previous experience of sitting on the ethics committee of St George’s Hospital, London. Ethics committees are now known as Research Ethics Committees. It is unclear whether this change in name was due to a political decision, but it was clearly an important change since in practice they act as research review committees with almost no expertise on ethics and consequently cannot function correctly in the way that the hospital community and patients would wish for.
