Consent: A Pocket Guide for Nursing and Health Care
Book
Marc Cornock
April 2023 [Scion Publishing Ltd]
Excerpt
Consent is a concept that can be complex and difficult to understand, but it does not have to be. This book is a handy pocket-sized guide to the consent process that treats consent as an essential part of your everyday practice. From assent to self-determination, via legally valid consent, it’s full of practical detail about: what consent is, who can give consent, the ways in which consent can be given…
Month: May 2023
To Consent or Not to Consent to Screening, That Is the Question
To Consent or Not to Consent to Screening, That Is the Question
Bjørn Hofmann
Healthcare, 30 March 2023
Abstract
The objective of this article is to address the controversial question of whether consent is relevant for persons invited to participate in screening programs. To do so, it starts by presenting a case where the provided information historically has not been sufficient for obtaining valid informed consent for screening. Then, the article investigates some of the most relevant biases that cast doubt on the potential for satisfying standard criteria for informed consent. This may indicate that both in theory and in practice, it can be difficult to obtain valid consent for screening programs. Such an inference is profoundly worrisome, as invitees to screening programs are healthy individuals most suited to make autonomous decisions. Thus, if consent is not relevant for screening, it may not be relevant for a wide range of other health services. As such, the lack of valid consent in screening raises the question of the relevance of one of the basic ethical principles in healthcare (respect for autonomy), one of the most prominent legal norms in health legislation (informed consent), and one of the most basic tenets of liberal democracies (individual autonomy). Thus, there are good reasons to provide open, transparent, and balanced information and minimize biases in order to ascertain informed consent in screening.
Editor’s note: This article belongs to the Special Issue The Rationalities of Medical Screening.
Consent in Surrogacy – Free or Manufactured?
Consent in Surrogacy – Free or Manufactured?
Ms. Soumya Verma
Indian Journal of Ethics, Logic and Philosophy, 21 April 2023
Abstract
Consent has an important role to play in the ethical domain, and the method by which consent is obtained should also be taken into consideration. It should not be taken by coercion, violence, or force. Surrogacy, a highly debatable topic in the domain of applied ethics whose legitimacy is significantly affected by consent, given by the surrogate mothers, which can change the different moral considerations and ethical claims. The contemporary debate on the issue of surrogacy seems to be between traditionalists and liberals, but this paper will take the debate further. In this paper, we shall try to problematize the liberal conception, which looks at the consent given by women in surrogacy limited to its face value, i.e., they limit consent to their saying “yes” because they have reproductive rights over their own bodies. This paper will further argue that consent in surrogacy should not be limited to its face value as taken by liberals, as it is not an ideal society, situations are different for different women, and there could be different social realities that constitute the factors behind that consent. Financial constraint, an important social reality, will be the focus of this paper, which leads a woman to give consent for surrogacy arrangements.
Consent as an act of commitment
Consent as an act of commitment
Robert E. Goodin
European Journal of Philosophy, 16 April 2023
Abstract
Some say that consent is essentially just a state of mind. Others say it is essentially just a communication. Many say it is both. I say it is neither. Instead it is an act, or rather a pair of acts—an internal mental act in the first instance, an external performative act in the second. Each of those acts is an act of commitment, intrapersonally in the first case and interpersonally in the second. The content of the commitment is, familiarly enough, to give permission to someone else to do something that it would be wrong for them to do without your permission. The novelty lies in seeing consent as an act of commitment in those two dimensions and in seeing those as commitments that persist until and unless undone by an act of a similar sort.
Posthumous autonomy: Agency and consent in body donation
Posthumous autonomy: Agency and consent in body donation
Tom Farsides, Claire F. Smith
Philosophical Psychology, 6 April 2023
Abstract
Six people were interviewed about the possibility of becoming posthumous body donors. Interview transcripts were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Individual-level analysis suggested a common interest in Personhood Concerns and a common commitment to Enlightenment Values. Investigations of these possible themes across participants resulted in identification of two sample-level themes, each with two subthemes: Autonomy, with subthemes of agency and consent, and Rationality, with subthemes of knowledge/epistemology and materialism/ontology. This paper concentrates on the former. Consent for posthumous body donation was felt to sometimes fall short of adequately identifying donors’ preferences about what happened after consent was given, even with respect to actions for which consent established permission. In turn, paucity of information about donors’ preferences limited others’ ability to act as proxy agents to facilitate donors’ posthumous autonomy. Thus, while consent may curtail violations of people’s autonomy by authorizing actions for which permission has been established, it may fall short of facilitating their autonomy in ways that might be possible with greater knowledge of those people’s desires. Alternative methods of establishing consent are explored that might better-determine people’s desires and thereby improve others’ ability to act as proxy agents for them to facilitate their subsequent (even posthumous) autonomy.
Center for Informed Consent Integrity 