© 2008 The Author Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Sociology Compass 2/5 (2008): 1506–1522, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00143.x The Ethical Dilemma of Ethical Committees Stuart Derbyshire* University of Birmingham, School of Psychology Abstract The Nuremberg code, a response to the 1946 Nuremberg Medical Trials, was the first attempt to formally state ethical requirements for medical research. The Code was generally ignored as a response to the peculiarly barbaric Nazi atrocities and an unnecessary fetter on normal research. A series of research scandals, however, led to more successful attempts at regulating medical research and to the introduction of various ethical committees during the 1970s. Since then, ethical committees have expanded their remit to regulate social as well as medical research and operate according to precautionary standards that far exceed what is necessary to protect public safety. Ethical committees block investigations of medical practice even when the intent is to benefit patients directly and they prevent social research entailing even far-fetched possibilities of ‘stress’. Although purportedly designed to protect patients and civil liberties, modern ethical regulation damages the doctor–patient relationship, undermines professional responsibility, and encourages negative scientific practice. Thirty years ago, research with health data was viewed as a requirement and even a moral duty for medical professionals (Gillott 2006). Research by academic scholars pursuing the understanding of social systems and human psychology was similarly a requirement for professors through to undergraduate students. The free inquiry of medical professionals and scholars was respected for the evident improvements in understanding that such inquiry provided and the subsequent greater scope for human action to solve problems. The confident expectation of benefit from research, however, has been in retreat since the end of the Second World War and the revelations of Nazi atrocities. A series of medical research scandals, prominently documented by Henry Beecher (1966) in the United States and Maurice Pappworth (1967) in the United Kingdom during the 1960s, further eroded the faith in medical science. Social scientists faced similar problems with widespread debate over research that invaded privacy and revealed unexpected hom- icidal and violent tendencies amongst ordinary members of the public and regular students (Haney et al. 1973; Humphreys 1970; Milgram 1963). At the beginning of the 1970s, the demand for medical and social research regulation was realised through the first research ethics committees