Slides from a presentation given to the Medical Sociology discussion group at the University of Leicester, reviewing Neil Manson and Onora O'Neill's 2007 book "rethinking informed consent in bioethics" www.lefthandedbiochemist.wordpress.com

1. Dr Chris Willmott Dept of Biochemistry, University of Leicester [email_address] Book Review : Rethinking Informed Consent In Bioethics Neil Manson and Onora O’Neill Social Science Group University of Leicester

2. About the authors Baroness Onora O’Neill Chair of Nuffield Foundation Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge Kantian framework Trust and Autonomy Neil Manson Senior Lecturer, Dept of Philosophy University of Lancaster Ethics of communication Virtues of not knowing

3. Necessity of Informed Consent Consent = Safeguard against paternalism Protecting individuals from harm Respecting individual autonomy

4. Necessity of Informed Consent “ Appeals to informed consent and its role on justifying clinical and research practice are now so well entrenched that their presence, indeed their necessity, and their justification are rarely questioned… ” (p2)

5. BUT: “… the quest for wider scope, for higher standards, for better justifications and for regulatory reinforcement, which aimed to make consent the lynchpin of biomedical ethics, has created intractable problems .” (p2) Necessity of Informed Consent?

25. Informational privacy Four distinctions: Agency v Conduit/container Transaction v Content Confidentiality v Data protection Communication ≠ Acquisition/possession

28. Strictly between you and me, X is really struggling to cope at the moment Hard to ‘unknow’ something The programme for the autumn series of seminars is available I notice that X is no longer listed to speak, is this a mistake? By the way, do you realise the message you just sent went to the whole list Earlier today an e-mail was inadvertently sent to this discussion list. Please delete this message immediately

54. Final take-home message “ We hope that the juggernaut of informed consent requirements that has been constructed across the last fifty years will be reformed and reduced within a far shorter period” (p200)