BMJ : British medical journal
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China is undergoing rapid motorisation--motor vehicle registrations are growing at a rate of 10%-20% a year. Road trauma is already a major public health problem, and road deaths, officially estimated to be around 50,000 a year, will almost certainly rise with increasing motorisation. China, with its millions of bicycles, currently has one of the most environmentally friendly transportation systems on the planet. However, as the trend towards car travel continues, the problems of congestion and environmental pollution so evident in the West will also become critical public health issues in China.
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Publication of medical research is both a monitor of the researcher's ethics and an audit of the local or regional ethics committee that approved it. Selectivity of publication or of the intention to publish lessens this audit. ⋯ Currently, such committees function with widely varying degrees of efficiency and quality of output, and with differing viewpoints on many ethical issues. Without an a priori insistence by institutional ethics committees that there be an intention to publish all medical research involving human subjects, ethics committees cannot routinely be subject to the scrutiny or audit which they themselves demand of researchers.