Must Consent Be Informed? Patient rights, state authority, and the moral basis of the physician’s duties of disclosure
, abstract:, Legal standards of disclosure in a variety of jurisdictions require physicians to inform patients about the likely consequences of treatment, as a condition for obtaining the patient’s consent. Such a duty to inform is special insofar as extensive disclosure of risks and potential benef...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
2021
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| In: |
Kennedy Institute of Ethics journal
Year: 2021, Volume: 31, Issue: 3, Pages: 247-270 |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | , abstract:, Legal standards of disclosure in a variety of jurisdictions require physicians to inform patients about the likely consequences of treatment, as a condition for obtaining the patient’s consent. Such a duty to inform is special insofar as extensive disclosure of risks and potential benefits is not usually a condition for obtaining consent in non-medical transactions., What could morally justify the physician’s special legal duty to inform? I argue that existing justifications have tried but failed to ground such special duties directly in basic and general rights, such as autonomy rights. As an alternative to such direct justifications, I develop an indirect justification of physicians’ special duties from an argument in Kant’s political philosophy. Kant argues that pre-legal rights to freedom are the source of a duty to form a state. The state has the authority to conclusively determine what counts as “consent” in various kinds of transactions. The Kantian account can subsequently indirectly justify at least one legal standard imposing a duty to inform, the reasonable person standard, but rules out one interpretation of a competitor, the subjective standard. |
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| ISSN: | 1086-3249 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Kennedy Institute of Ethics journal
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/ken.2021.0021 |