The biobank consent debate: why ‘meta-consent’ is still the solution!

Why is informed consent important?

INFORMED CONSENT AND TRUST: EYAL’S ARGUMENT In our feature article, Nir Eyal attacks attempts by bioethicists including Onora O’Neill, Torbjörn Tännsjö, and Jennifer Jackson to ground the importance of informed consent in its role in safeguarding trust in medical practice (see page 437, Editor’s choice). The trustpromotion argument for informed consent, as Eyal terms it, states (1) that trust i...

Normative consent is not consent.

The UK has an opt-in system of consent for postmortem organ donation. More specifically, the Human Tissue Act 2004 prohibits the removal, storage, and use of organs postmortem for a range of ‘‘scheduled purposes’’—which include transplantation—unless ‘‘appropriate consent’’ has been given. Appropriate consent can be given by the donor premortem by signing and carrying a donor card, or by opting...

Closed-system suctioning: why is the debate still open?

The Abortion Informed Consent Debate: More Light, Less Heat

ion to a baby in the eyes of the potentially aborting mother," and thereby has an emotional impact far beyond its factual impact.136 While this may be true, excessive reliance on such arguments in the context of abortion and reproductive decision-making runs the risk of supporting entrenched assumptions about women's emotional vulnerability-assumptions that critics of abortion disclosure laws e...

Adding Consent to Choice in the Abortion Debate

The abortion debates are characterized by confrontation, sides polarized one against the other, as James Taranto notes in his essay on “The ‘Roe Effect’.” What is more, most agree, including Taranto, that Roe is a “study in unanticipated consequences.” In Taranto’s case, he defines that study as the “nexus between the practice of abortion and the politics of abortion.” Specifically, he analyzes...