In the UK, medical ethics and law are often thought of and taught together, but while 'good medical ethics' is often reflected in law-the need to obtain a patient's adequately informed consent, for example-this is not necessarily the case. Sometimes medical ethics is more demanding than law; at other times, perhaps counterintuitively, the law appears to ask more of doctors than does good medica...

The rule that one must obtain informed consent is well established in medical ethics and an intrinsic part of clinical practice and of research in biomedicine. However, there is a tendency that the rule today is being applied too rigidly and with too little sensitivity to the values that are at stake in connection with different kinds of research protocols. It is here argued that the quality of...

procedures, but between procedures in which more, and procedures in which less, is at stake. In this regard, external-beam radiotherapy does not differ relevantly from technically more invasive procedures such as brachytherapy. The authors reject the argument that implicit consent has been obtained simply because a “patient attends for consultation and follows through on all of the multiple ste...

In Australia, as in other common law jurisdictions, the doctrine of informed consent has developed from the principle that individuals have a right to decide for themselves whether or not to undergo medical treatments. 1 The personal autonomy of the patient is facilitated by the provision of information by their medical practitioner. While a description in broad terms of the procedure to be per...

The concept of informed consent was first used in the 60's. The meaning of this term is the need of a preliminary and valid consensus that places the doctor in an authorised condition whereby he is able to carry out his work. Notwithstanding the importance and delicacy of this topic and the potentially serious consequences, there is not, as yet, universal behaviour, on the part of doctors, rega...

Cancer clinical trials are a necessary component of the effort to improve cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Essential to this process is the informed consent of the individuals who participate in these research studies. The purpose of this article is to describe patient, provider, and informed consent process issues with presentations of data reported in the current literature. The r...

Until about thirty years ago, the extent of disclosure about and consent-seeking for medical interventions was influenced by a beneficence model of professional behaviour. Informed consent shifted attention to a duty to respect the autonomy of patients. The new requirement arrived on the American scene in two separate contexts: for daily practice in 1957, and for clinical study in 1966. A confu...

OBJECTIVE To address the need to describe informed consent in pediatric settings and to identify barriers to parent understanding, this study assessed how aspects of clinician-parent communication during the informed consent conference (ICC) relate to parent understanding of informed consent and parent perception of the impact of the ICC on their anxiety and control. METHODS Parents of 127 ch...

What renders some mentally disordered patients incapable of informed consent to medical interventions? It is argued that a patient is incapable of giving informed consent owing to mental disorder, if a mental disorder prevents a patient from understanding what s/he consents to; if a mental disorder prevents a patient from choosing decisively; if a mental disorder prevents a patient from communi...

The therapeutic misconception has been seen as presenting an ethical problem because failure to distinguish the aims of research participation from those receiving ordinary treatment may seriously undermine the informed consent of research subjects. Hence, most theoretical and empirical work on the problems of the therapeutic misconception has been directed to evaluate whether, and to what degr...