helped?

multicentre research could be approved by a single local committee, whose decision would then be accepted by other committees. Criticism2 and complaints from research workers, described by Alberti3, showed that this advice was not followed. Then, after a long wait, came multicentre research ethics committees (MRECs), which it was hoped would mean less time and money wasted on securing ethical approval from numerous local committees. Here we report the experience of conducting a three-stage multicentre study, requiring ethical approval for each stage in turn and subject to MREC approval half way through. A SIMPLE STUDY This was to be a simple research study of the lifestyle health behaviours of young adult survivors of childhood cancer, treated at the children's hospital at one regional centre i