PLoS Blog

The Guardian's front page story from a couple of days ago ("NHS medical research plan threatens patient privacy") looks like it has generated some healthy and opinionated responses from readers, but the government consultation that led up to it has now closed. The story here is that the proposed UK National Health Service constitution - enshrining the principles and values of the NHS - contained, buried amongst other important stuff on issues such as access to services, quality of care, and informed choice, a crucial nugget which could change the way that medical researchers get access to patients' data.

At the end of October 2008, Niyaz Ahmed (PLoS ONE Section Editor for Microbiology and Genomics) passed the milestone of 50 papers handled for PLoS ONE and by the time I caught up with him to congratulate him, he had reached almost 60. Given this great achievement, I thought it would be a perfect excuse to interview him for our ongoing series of ‘Discussions with PLOS ONE Editors”.

A Health in Action paper published in PLoS Medicine recently describes the success of an innovative project called inSPOT – an e-card notification system that enables people who have been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease to inform their sexual partners that they may also be at risk.

To kick off our series of interviews with PLoS ONE Editorial Board Members, I started with a phone call to one of our longer standing Academic Editors - Ivan Baxter, who is currently the Section Editor covering Plant Biology. Ivan is a Senior Research Associate at the Bindley Bioscience Center at Purdue University.

Last week the World Association of Medical Editors announced the new Declaration of Helsinki. This document, which was first drawn up in 1964, is essential reading for everyone doing research on human participants.