Should European Independent Ethics Committees be dismantled?

Year in review in Intensive Care Medicine 2009. Part III: Mechanical ventilation, acute lung injury and respiratory distress syndrome, pediatrics, ethics, and miscellanea

“…To be eligible for such “fast-track” review, protocols must entail only “minimal risks” to participants. In an editorial to these two papers, Chassany [99] reminds us that the EU directive and all provisions it sets up cover only the area of drug research, and that the rest of clinical research, on medical devices, surgery, pathophysiology, etc., is totally left out. This is a major cause for the heterogeneity of ethical review within the EU.…”