We assessed the extent of research ethics approval and informed consent reporting in publications emanating from Cameroon and indexed in PubMed from 2005-2009. In our review of 219 full-length articles, we found that 57.53% reported ethics approval, 70.78% informed consent, and 50.68% both ethics approval and informed consent. Reporting these procedures was more common in randomized clinical tr...

This issue's "Legal Briefing" column covers recent legal developments involving informed consent.1 We covered this topic in previous articles in The Journal of Clinical Ethics.2 But an updated discussion is warranted. First, informed consent remains a central and critically important issue in clinical ethics. Second, there have been numerous significant legal changes over the past year. We cate...

The roles of informed consent in medicine are to promote patient centered autonomy, protect the physician from liability and limit paternalism (1). Although informed consent has evolved to include a description of the procedure, relevant risks and benefits and an assessment of the patient’s comprehension and acceptance of the intervention, it is unclear whether the process provides optimal info...

BACKGROUND Placebo groups are used in randomised clinical trials (RCTs) to control for placebo effects, which can be large. Participants in trials can misunderstand written information particularly regarding technical aspects of trial design such as randomisation; the adequacy of written information about placebos has not been explored. We aimed to identify what participants in major RCTs in th...

Increasingly, bioethicists defend informed consent as a safeguard for trust in caretakers and medical institutions.This paper discusses an ‘ideal type’ of that move. What I call the trust-promotion argument for informed consent states:1. Social trust, especially trust in caretakers and medical institutions, is necessary so that, for example,people seek medical advice, comply with it, and partic...

n engl j med 363;27 nejm.org december 30, 201