Multiple research guidelines address the issue of standard of care in international collaborative research. These guidelines fail to appreciate that differing standards may be present within the same country, which makes their application sometimes impracticable. In circumstances where ethics review committees follow one of these guidelines entirely and to the hilt, some relevant and useful research is rejected while the way for "me too" drug trials is paved. It should be acceptable to hold different researchers to separate standards of care on the basis of their intentions, their financial resources, their ultimate gains from the research, and subsequent utilisation of the results of the research, even when these researchers come from the same country where the research is being conducted.