'The ethics approval took 20 months on a trial which was meant to help terminally ill cancer patients. In the end we had to send the funding back': a survey of views on human research ethics reviews.

Considerable differences exist between researchers and HREC members, about when to exempt from review the research that ultimately serves the interests of patients and the public. It is widely accepted that evaluative research should be used to reduce clinical uncertainties-the same principle should apply to ethics reviews.