The importance of listening to medical students' experiences when teaching them medical ethics.

This paper describes the change of emphasis that occurred in the teaching of ethics to small groups of clinical students. Although the original focus of the course was on the analysis of ethical dilemmas associated with individual patients known to the students, it soon became evident that there were, for the students themselves, more fundamental ethical dilemmas in their new role as clinical students. These included worries about how to respond when patients asked questions which their consultants had previously deceived them about, worries about inflicting pain on patients, as with intravenous cannulation, and the role of the medical student in the clinical team. We emphasise the need to explore student experiences as part of the process of ethics teaching.

Research on human subjects: Australian ethics committees take tentative steps.

Australian medical researchers are attempting to formulate a response to some of the ethical issues in medical research. The debate over the in vitro fertilisation programme has highlighted some community concern about research ethics and the role of the ethics committee. While very little is known about Australian ethics committees, it appears that a two-tiered approach comprising both ethical review and scientific review is acceptable to the research community. However, this approach plus some problems with the nature of informed consent, begs the question of the role of these committees in the broader context of medical research in the community. Important aspects of a seminar for members of hospital ethics committees are reported.

KIE: A recent meeting of hospital ethics committee members in Victoria, Australia, revealed a diversity of opinions on the place of these committees in that country's research institutions. Among the issues discussed by participants were the relationship between ethics committees and medical research committees, dissatisfaction with informed consent procedures, problems with the use of the mentally ill and children as research subjects, and consent to in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer. Osborne concludes that Australian ethics committees need to understand better the philosophical basis for their existence, and to re-define their roles vis-à-vis both subjects and researchers.

The catecholamine-containing tubero-infundibular system and the control of luteinizing hormone release in the rabbit.

As determined by fluorescence histochemistry, the distribution of catecholamine-containing neurons in the hypothalamus of the female rabbit is similar to that seen in the rat. The fluorescence appearance of the hypothalamus was not appreciably different from normal at 0.25, 1, 4 or 24 h after mating, but in animals in which the synthesis of catecholamines was inhibited by the administration of the tyrosine hydroxylase inhibitor, H44/68, the number of fluorescent neurons seen in the nucleus periventricularis arcuatus following copulation was markedly reduced. However, the concentrations of luteinizing hormone (LH) in serum and in the pituitary glands of mated and unmated animals treated with H44/68 were not significantly different from those found in the corresponding control animals. This, together with the fact that ovulation followed mating in drug-treated rabbits suggests that a normal level of catecholamines in the tubero-infundibular system is not essential for the secretion of the amount of LH necessary for ovulation.