Human tissue bill has impact on professional examinations
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《英国医生杂志》
EDITOR—I endorse the views and concerns expressed by Furness and Sullivan on whether the draft human tissue bill will achieve an appropriate balance between the rights of individuals and the benefits to society of the use of human materials.1 The practicality of monitoring consent for all patients is a major concern, and observations of our own attempts to do this by using a combination of a separate section on the consent form and a declaration on the laboratory request form indicate, despite a huge effort by the laboratories, that this is not a reliable way of recording patients' views.
One aspect of the use of human tissue that has not received much attention is in professional examinations. The examinations of the Royal College of Pathologists provide a critical appraisal of candidates' abilities to recognise disease processes in blood samples, cytology specimens, and tissue biopsy samples. The examiners take great care to select material that will discriminate between those candidates who are competent and those who require further training.
With the current wording of the bill, one presumes that only material from patients who had given consent could be used in examinations. This unintended consequence of the legislation is likely to severely restrict the examiners' ability to set appropriately demanding examinations.
Timothy R Helliwell, reader in pathology
Department of Pathology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GA trh@liv.ac.uk
Competing interests: None declared.
References
Furness P, Sullivan R. The human tissue bill. BMJ 2004;328: 533-4. (6 March.)
One aspect of the use of human tissue that has not received much attention is in professional examinations. The examinations of the Royal College of Pathologists provide a critical appraisal of candidates' abilities to recognise disease processes in blood samples, cytology specimens, and tissue biopsy samples. The examiners take great care to select material that will discriminate between those candidates who are competent and those who require further training.
With the current wording of the bill, one presumes that only material from patients who had given consent could be used in examinations. This unintended consequence of the legislation is likely to severely restrict the examiners' ability to set appropriately demanding examinations.
Timothy R Helliwell, reader in pathology
Department of Pathology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GA trh@liv.ac.uk
Competing interests: None declared.
References
Furness P, Sullivan R. The human tissue bill. BMJ 2004;328: 533-4. (6 March.)