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Correspondence

Nature 449, 139 (13 September 2007) | doi:10.1038/449139c; Published online 12 September 2007

Open Innovation Challenges

Researchers' ethical duties are not to be outsourced

Leonard H. Glantz1

  1. Department of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02118, USA

Your News Feature 'Trial and error', on the problems with research ethics committees designed to establish whether a proposed experiment is ethically sound (Nature 448, 530–532; 2007), presents avoidance of liability and the desire to retain power as the main reasons why institutions favour local control over centralized review. But institutions are ethically, not just legally, responsible for what happens to human subjects under their care.