Consent for publication

A preschool boy had a biopsy to confirm a condition from which he subsequently made a complete recovery. Later, he and his younger brother were reported by their female carer to have developed a possible recurrence and this looked likely on near-patient testing. At each review their carer urged us to undertake further biopsies on them both, but we did not feel that this was necessary.

We received a paper reporting on the outcomes of treatment of an individual with obsessive–compulsive disorder and body dysmorphic disorder, which seemed not to respond to standard treatment. Following ethical review and approval, and individual consent, the individual was treated with several distinct courses of an experimental therapy. The individual’s clinical and family history, and their outcomes in response to the experimental therapy, were detailed in the paper.

A manuscript was submitted about prenatal diagnosis of a specific cardiac disease. Short case reports of four babies who died were included. Although there are no names, we believe that there are sufficient details about the particular baby being described to be identified by the parents and by those involved in their care. The authors argue that:

The editors of a scientific journal were sent a letter of complaint from Drs A and B who noticed that a paper had been published online ahead of the print edition authored by Dr C.

A letter was sent to the editor indicating that three articles (one of them in the editor’s journal) on identical subjects had been published in the same year (2006) by the same authors, accusing the first author of all three articles of stealing data from and plagiarising a previously published article from the academic institution where the first author previously worked.

A group in a developed country performed an audit of pregnancy and its outcome in a group of 250 women with congenital heart disease. There were four maternal deaths of women in the series. It was decided to write up the audit.

The journal received a case report for a patient presenting with a particular syndrome in which patients give approximate answers to simple questions. This syndrome has been considered as a dissociative condition but others have argued that it reflects simulation of psychiatric symptoms. The case report was an individual who had crashed his car and, following that, developed complaints of memory impairment and at psychiatric review this syndrome was diagnosed.

The case of a patient with unresolved upper abdominal pain and weight loss was written up and submitted by her family doctor to a journal that publishes interactive case reports. The intention was to present it as an unfolding story in three parts over five weeks. Responses would be invited on the journal’s website from readers to questions about diagnosis and management, and about what to say to the patient.

一些作者测试了食物对月经周期的影响。稿件包括患者可识别的信息，但作者没有提供正式确认，患者同意公布该研究。信息已发送给通讯作者，概述了对患者同意发表的法律义务。

A paper described a problem of two women who wanted their fetuses to be tested for a genetic condition, but where in both cases their partners had refused to give consent. Should the journal publish such a paper without obtaining consent from the partners? The editors think not, but the authors are unconvinced.