Only eight years after a major revision of the Declaration of Helsinki (DoH), this highly egarded document providing ethical guidance for research involving human beings has now undergone another revision . This prompts the question why the World edical Association (WMA), which issues the Declaration, decided to make changes again so oon. One can only speculate whether powerful forces exerted pressure on the WMA to change some key provisions that were viewed as unfriendly to industry and other major sponsors of multinational research. The 2008 revision strengthens the previous version in some respects and weakens it in others. The most salutary improvement is in the aragraph that stipulates when it is ethically acceptable to use placebos in a control arm of a andomised, controlled clinical trial.