Informed Consent – Must It Remain a Fairy Tale?

When the editors of the Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy asked me to contribute an article to their issue in honor of my friend, colleague and dean, Guido Calabresi, I accepted their invitation with pleasure. Since I had reflected about informed consent for two decades, I welcomed this opportunity to set forth my final thoughts and conclusions, however briefly and summarily, on this doctrine and its impact on physician- patient decisionmaking. This essay gives a good account of what I shall ever be able to say about informed consent