PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - R K Lie
TI  - Research ethics and evidence based medicine
AID  - 10.1136/jme.2003.007203
DP  - 2004 Apr 01
TA  - Journal of Medical Ethics
PG  - 122--125
VI  - 30
IP  - 2
4099  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/30/2/122.short
4100  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/30/2/122.full
SO  - J Med Ethics2004 Apr 01; 30
AB  - In this paper, the author argues that the requirement to conduct randomised clinical trials to inform policy in cases where one wants to identify a cheaper alternative to known effective but expensive interventions raises an important ethical issue. This situation will eventually arise whenever there are resource constraints, and a policy decision has been made not to fund an intervention on cost effectiveness grounds. It has been thought that this is an issue only in extremely resource poor settings. This paper gives an example from the United Kingdom illustrating that this is also a problem faced by richer countries.