Hot Topics: Informed Consent

Blog Posts (4)

May 15, 2013

Informed Consent: Cool PEG tube video edition

Here's a great Youtube video on PEG tube placement; it seems to be up as a marketing move by the company that made it. Is there any reason why patients and their families shouldn't always watch something like this in connection with informed consent fo...
April 18, 2013

The Ethics of Asking in Organ Donation

Original Commentary by BEI Young Professionals member Olivette Burton, MBe, MSW. Last Sunday my friend collapsed on a soccer field and was rushed to the hospital. In an instant, a lifelong athlete with a fantastic physique and a beautiful spirit was go...
April 18, 2013

The Ethics of Asking in Organ Donation

Original Commentary by BEI Young Professionals member Olivette Burton, MBe, MSW. Last Sunday my friend collapsed on a soccer field and was rushed to the hospital. In an instant, a lifelong athlete with a fantastic physique and a beautiful spirit was go...
April 13, 2013

Study of Babies Did Not Disclose Risks, U.S. Finds

[New York Time] A federal agency has found that a number of prestigious universities failed to tell more than a thousand families in a government-financed study of oxygen levels for extremely premature babies that the risks could include increased ch...

Published Articles (3)

AJOB Primary Research: Volume 4 Issue 2 - Apr 2013

Do Hospitalized Patients in a Nigerian Community Consider Informed Consent Necessary? Omokhoa Adedayo Adeleye & Ekaete Alice Tobin

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 13 Issue 4 - Apr 2013

Does Consent Bias Research? Mark A. Rothstein & Abigail B. Shoben

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 12 Issue 3 - Mar 2012

To Tell the Truth, the Whole Truth, May Do Patients Harm: The Problem of the Nocebo Effect for Informed Consent Rebecca Erwin Wells & Ted J. Kaptchuk

News (5)

February 28, 2013 12:49 pm

Furor over horsemeat reveals need for strict food labeling (NBC News)

Would you eat horsemeat?  A lot of people would not. Should you have the right to know if the meat you are eating contains horsemeat?  The answer to that question is a resounding yes…

July 12, 2012 12:29 pm

U.S. Injected Gitmo Detainees With ‘Mind Altering’ Drugs (Wired News (blog))

Prisoners inside the U.S. military’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay were forcibly given “mind altering drugs,” including being injected with a powerful anti-psychotic sedative used in psychiatric hospitals. Prisoners were often not told what medications they received, and were tricked into believing routine flu shots were truth serums. It’s a serious violation of medical ethics, made worse by the fact that the military continued to interrogate prisoners while they were doped on psychoactive chemicals.

July 9, 2012 9:08 pm

Hospitals 'letting patients die to save money' (The Telegraph)

Hospitals may be depriving elderly patients of food and drink to hasten their deaths as part of cost-cutting measures to free up bed space, leading doctors warn.  The six doctors are experts in elderly care and wrote the letter in conjunction with the Medical Ethics Alliance, a Christian medical organisation. They say that many members of the public have contacted them with examples of inappropriate use of the pathway, which is implemented in up to 29 per cent of hospital deaths.

June 21, 2012 1:19 pm

Informed consent: A broken contract (Nature)

The example points to a broad problem in research on humans — that informed consent is often not very well informed (see ‘Reading between the lines’). Protections for participants have been cobbled together in the wake of past controversies and have always been difficult to uphold. But they are proving even more problematic in the ‘big data’ era, in which biomedical scientists are gathering more information about more individuals than ever before. Many studies now include the collection of genetic data, and researchers can interrogate those data in a growing number of ways. Several US states, including California, are considering laws that would curtail the way in which researchers, law-enforcement officials and private companies can use a person’s DNA.

April 2, 2012 9:21 am

Grady urges reform in human research (Duke Chronicle)

The way clinical studies inform patients about what they are getting involved with works no better in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world, one expert said. Patients from both developed and third world countries exhibited a similar lack of understanding of the medical research process, which limits their discernible rights, said Christine Grady, the chief of the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.