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More than 500 journals have adopted the uniform requirements of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which stipulate that authors should “indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation.”1 One major purpose of institutional review is to ensure that informed consent is obtained when possible. We investigated how often research publications about child health report ethics committee approval or informed consent. We reviewed all research reports related to child health (involving patients <18 years, pregnant women, or clinicians providing care to children) published in 1999 in five American journals ( JAMA , New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics , Journal of Pediatrics , Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine ). Each report was reviewed independently by two research assistants for any statement about informed consent or ethics committee approval; if either statement was present, the report was categorised as having ethical approval. An article that referred to another publication for more details was not reviewed. …
Bauchner et al. (Sat,) studied this question.