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Leading epidemiologists are concerned that the interpretation of the Data Protection Act by the Department of Health, local health authorities and the General Medical Council is hindering vital research on the causes of death and ill health. Last week a letter in the BMJ stressed the importance of medical information for auditing population screening and health promotion activities. Adding his voice to the debate, Professor Julian Peto of the Institute of Cancer Research has claimed that research funded by the Health and Safety Executive into the association between asbestos exposure and cancer has been held up for well over a year because the relevant authorities claim they cannot provide the researchers with the names of doctors who may have patients eligible for the study, or with information that would enable them to find potential healthy controls (see report in The Times). Without access to medical information about individual patients, research into the genetic and environmental causes of disease cannot go ahead.

A clause in the Health and Social Care Act, which has just received royal assent, enables the Secretary of State for Health to permit the use of patient information for specific purposes if it is in the public interest, but researchers fear that its application may be too cumbersome and that medical research should have a blanket exemption from the provisions of the Data Protection Act. During the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill through Parliament, the House of Lords successfully opposed a clause that would have enabled the Secretary of State to restrict the disclosure and use of anonymised patient information for commercial purposes (for example by the pharmaceutical industry). The Government also agreed to establish a statutory advisory committee to review the Act's provisions on confidential medical information, and the use of these provisions by the Secretary of State