Information, Decisions, and the Limits of Informed Consent

Authors

Carl E. Scheider, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow
Michael H. Farrell, Yale University School of MedicineFollow

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2000

Abstract

For many years, the heart's wish of bioethics has been to confide medical decisions to patients and not to doctors. The favoured key to doing so has been the doctrine of informed consent. The theory of and hopes for that doctrine are well captured in the influential case of Caterbury v. Spence: '[t]rue consent to what happens to one's self is the informed exercise of a choice, and that entails an opportunity to evaluate knoledgeably the options available and the risks attendant upon each'.

Comments

Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.

Publication Information & Recommended Citation

Schneider, Carl E., co-author. "Information, Decisions, and the Limits of Informed Consent." M. H. Farrell, co-author. In Law and Medicine, edited by M. Freeman and A. D. E. Lewis, 107-26. Current Legal Issues, 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.