Misplaced allegations

As chairs of the Clinical Research Ethics Board (REB) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), we felt we should respond to the allegations made in CMAJ's Holiday Review by Ian Scott and Cheryl Wilson,1 both of UBC. Although there does appear to be a correlation between forest industry activity and the paper demands of research ethics boards, we suspect that this is more association than causation.

Nonetheless, we were concerned about the issue and conducted some further research. Ethics approval was not sought, because we could not afford to make the 20 copies required by our own REB. What we found is far more disturbing than the aforementioned association. Table 1 clearly shows what appears to be a strong association between the number of copies of ethics applications required by REBs and the number of Conservative Party of Canada plus Progressive Conservative (PC) members of Parliament from each province (Table 1). We are not sure how this factor has influenced the number of copies required by REBs, but we plan to find out. We also believe that the reason the PCs are still listed (at the time of writing, in mid-January 2004) as a separate entity in the House of Commons party standings,2 despite recent reports of a merger with the Canadian Alliance, is to obscure this association.

Hence, for the foreseeable future, we plan to approve only research proposals that look into this issue. To expedite the process, we will require only 1 copy of any original research proposal that examines this disturbing trend. However, if the application comes from the Department of Family Practice at UBC, 40 copies will be required.

James McCormack Associate Chair Peter Loewen Chair Clinical Research Ethics Board University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC (Not on behalf of any of the other members of the UBC Clinical Research Ethics Board.)