Informing consent in New Zealand research: researchers’ conflict of interest and patient vulnerability

The authors, members of two different regional health ethics committees, write about their observations evaluating ethics application where researchers ’ conflicts of interest go unacknowledged either when researching their own patients or when the research subjects experience a temporary vulnerability—i.e. they have learned they are to lose a body part such as a breast, bowel, or limb. Currently the operational standard code of ethics does not address either issue even when New Zealand health ethics had its origins at National Women’s Hospital where a physician researched his own patients. Under this situation the researcher’s conflict of role undermined informed consent. The paper ends rewriting Section 26 of the Operational Standard. Recent debates about informed consent in the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ)1–3 focused on a narrow reading of the nature of informed consent. Their combined discussion was limited to the dynamics of informed consent within doctor and patient relationships. The Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson2 quotes the Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal’s latest ruling that makes i