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Category: Editorials
April 01, 2012
We see today a shift in the terrain of trade agreements from the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the binding trade rules that it imposes on member countries, to bilateral and regional trade agreements. From 1990 to 2007, the number of such agreements notified to the General Agreement on Tarif...
January 01, 2012
With this issue of January 2012, the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME) is entering its 20th year of uninterrupted publication. In the last 19 years, the journal has never had to combine two issues, and has been published regularly in the first month of each quarter. This has been a remar...
January 01, 2012
A case study entitled "Observational study of cervical cancer", on research undertaken in a south Asian country, published in a compilation of case studies by Cash and others , is the subject of a collection of commentaries in this issue of IJME. The range of responses reflects the commentators’ ...
January 01, 2012
The need for better methods of selection for postgraduate (PG) medical seats in different specialties has never been more keenly felt than in the current scenario. Multiple entrance exams, management quota and paid seats, the urgency to get into a PG seat at any cost and the mushrooming of PG ent...
October 01, 2011
The guidelines issued in 2006 by the Indian Council for Medical Research in India, for the formation and conduct of clinical trials in India, are still the benchmark by which the conduct of such trials is evaluated. Unfortunately, these guidelines have not yet got the force of law, since the bill...
October 01, 2011
Empirical research indicates that much of the evidence required for the practice of evidence-based medicine cannot be trusted. The research agenda has been hijacked by those with vested interests within industry and academia, determining what research is funded and how it is done and reported. Un...
July 01, 2011
Two years ago in an editorial we discussed the importance of bringing the spotlight onto the functioning of ethics committees (ECs) in India. Since the first ethical guidelines for biomedical research were formulated by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in 1980 (and their subsequent v...
July 01, 2011
Ethics is now at the centre stage of medical education and calls to intensify its formal teaching in the curriculum are getting louder. In the past, ethics was often given short shrift in the Indian MBBS curriculum, and consigned to a few forgotten pages in textbooks of forensic medicine. These m...
April 01, 2011
On March 7, 2011, the Supreme Court of India (SCI) delivered a progressive judgement with far-reaching implications for end-of-life care and medical practice. The 110-page document written by Justice Markandey Katju was delivered by a two-judge division bench. It is available on the SCI website a...
April 01, 2011
Between February 13 and March 18, 2011, a total of 18 women lost their lives while admitted in Umaid Hospital and the MG Hospital, Jodhpur, for medical management of their pregnancies. The majority of these women were from villages and all were from weak socio-economic backgrou...
