TY - JOUR T1 - Applying safeguards of research integrity to unethical organ donation and transplantation JF - Journal of Medical Ethics JO - J Med Ethics SP - 685 LP - 686 DO - 10.1136/medethics-2020-106535 VL - 46 IS - 10 AU - Katrina A Bramstedt Y1 - 2020/10/01 UR - http://jme.bmj.com/content/46/10/685.abstract N2 - Higgins’ et al recent paper1 presents a well-thought ethical analysis of the problems associated with the publication of unethical transplant research. More generally, research ethics committees never allow the use or reuse of data that has been collected without their required approval. Similarly, in many judicial settings, evidence is generally inadmissible when it is gathered illegally.2 Thus, journals and other publishers should follow in their footsteps and also roadblock any associated publications.Moreover, unethical organ donation and transplantation research is rife with integrity issues, which violate publication norms (eg, fabrication or falsification of the source of the donor organs; absent informed consent of living donors or donor families; funder conflict of interest). If these normally accepted exclusions3 are ignored, then publishers are turning off their moral compass and facilitating an attitude of ‘anything goes’ in the conduct of research. Table 1 presents a timeline of scholarly responses to the problem of publishing unethical transplant research. As shown, since 2007 there has been a slow evolution of changing publisher practices, yet more … ER -