Public views on priority setting for high cost medications in public hospitals in Australia.

Objective: To gather information about views of members of the general public about access to High Cost Medications (HCMs) in public hospitals.

Methods: A structured questionnaire was administered to members of the general public. Individuals were approached in train stations, shopping centres and different venues in the Sydney metropolitan area.

Ties that bind: multiple relationships between clinical researchers and the pharmaceutical industry.

Background: It is believed that pharmaceutical industry sponsorship of clinical research leads to the development of multiple ties between clinicians and the pharmaceutical industry. To quantify this relationship we conducted a survey of medical specialists listed in the Medical Directory of Australia in 2002 and 2003.

Methods: A questionnaire was mailed that elicited information about all aspects of research relationships between clinicians and pharmaceutical companies.

Medical specialists and pharmaceutical industry-sponsored research: a survey of the Australian experience.

Objectives: To characterise research relationships between medical specialists and the pharmaceutical industry in Australia.

Design And Setting: Questionnaire survey of medical specialists listed in the Medical Directory of Australia and believed to be in active practice, conducted in 2002 and 2003.

Main Outcome Measures: Details of medical specialists' involvement in pharmaceutical industry-sponsored research, and reports of potentially undesirable research outcomes.

Research ethics review and the bureaucracy.

This paper suggests that the increasing bureaucracy of ethics review by committee is more about fulfilling institutional requirements than it is about ethics. It is suggested that ethics committees should not be instruments of bureaucratic regulation and control. They should be freed to play a critical role within the institution, to support and develop ethical research and researchers, and given time to discuss and explore the difficult ethical issues where they arise.

Loved one's body in the anatomy laboratory.

An Australian medical student recognized parts of her father's body during classes in an anatomy laboratory and suffered considerable trauma as a consequence. While the risk of a further case may be small, the potential for trauma could be minimized by adopting appropriate policy and procedures. Institutions that receive donations of bodies may benefit from considering suggestions for minimizing that risk and for responding appropriately should it ever occur.

Public health ethics: asylum seekers and the case for political action.

This paper is a case study in public health ethics. It considers whether there is a basis in ethics for political action by health professionals and their associations in response to inhumane treatment. The issue arises from Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and the charge that this treatment has been both immoral and inhumane.

Medical harm and the consequences of error for doctors.

Mistakes in medicine, particularly when patients have suffered harm as a result, are of ethical concern as breaching a fundamental injunction in medicine: "first do not harm". To minimise the chances of a recurrence, an effective response to harm must take into account both the concerns of patients who have been harmed and the concerns of doctors who may fear extreme outcomes if a mistake is admitted. There is an apparent conflict between a need to respond to errors non-punitively, on the one hand, and ethical and legal requirements for accountability and compensation for anyone harmed, on the other.

Declarations made by graduating medical students in Australia and New Zealand.

Objective: To survey the use of declarations of ethical commitment made by graduating medical students in Australia and New Zealand.

Methods: Information, obtained by email and telephone, from faculty officers of all faculties of medicine (or medicine and health sciences) in Australia and New Zealand.

Results: Declarations are made by graduating medical students at seven of 12 Australasian faculties of medicine.

Paying people to participate in research: why not? A response to Wilkinson and Moore.

This paper argues against paying people to participate in research. Volunteering to participate as a subject in a research program is not like taking a job. The main difference is to do with the risks inherent in research.