Rethinking Informed Consent

The doctrine requiring physicians to obtain a patient\u27s informed consentbefore undertaking treatment is relatively young, having first appeared in arecognizable, relatively robust form only in 1957. Yet the values that underliethe doctrine have an ancient pedigree. The consent norm had occupied aprominent and honored place in our legal thought for many centuries beforethe courts began to develop a jurisprudence of informed consent in healthcare. Also well established was the cognate notion that consent must beinformed or knowledgeable in some meaningful sense if we are to accord itlegal or moral significance