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Robert J. Levine, for example, has observed that the autonomy centered approach to consent reflects an American and thus minority viewpoint. See Levine, R. J., “Informed Consent: Some Challenges to the Universal Validity of the Western Model,” Law, Medicine, and Healthcare 19 (1991): 207–213, at 207; see also Duffy, T. P., “Agamemnon's Fate and the Medical Profession,” Western New England Law Review 9 (1987): 21–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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Others have noted that the narrow focus of the doctrine eliminates consideration of values such as family integrity and physician competence. See, Blackhall, L. J. Murphy, S. Frank, G. Michel, V. Azen, S., “Ethnicity and Attitudes Toward Patient Autonomy,” JAMA 274, no. 10 (1995): 820–825.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

See e.g., Canterbury v. Spence, 464 F.2d 784 (D.C. Circ. 1972) (where it is insisted that informed consent is required to secure “the patient's right of self determination” or the Patient Self-Determination Act passed of 1990 codified as Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101–508, §§4206, 4751).Google Scholar

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Interestingly, Blackhall found that although European and African Americans more often believed that patients should know the truth about a terminal diagnosis, they had different reasons for their beliefs. European American participants in the study explained that disclosure was important to allow dying patients’ time to get their affairs in order. African American participants often expressed the view that disclosure was important to allow dying patients in time to communicate with God, either to seek forgiveness or to pray for healing and recovery. See, Blackhall, L. J. et al., “Bioethics in a Different Tongue: The Case of Truth-Telling” Journal of Urban Health 78, no. 1 (2001): 59–71. (This is part two of the study reported in “Ethnicity and Attitudes toward Patient Autonomy”).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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While we might say that a Korean-American's choice to rely on family members is itself an expression of autonomous self-determination, the Blackhall studies reveal that we would have to impose the importance of autonomy on Koreans in order to reach this explanation since this culture places little value on the Western notion of individual self determination.Google Scholar

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Id., at 1481–1482. See also Tse, C. Y. et al., “Breaking Bad News: A Chinese Perspective,” Palliative Medicine 17, no. 4 (2003): 339–343. (Reporting similar findings among Chinese patients from Hong Kong to conclude, “The concept of self is a relational one in Chinese culture and family relationship emphasizes harmonious interdependence.” But warning that “although autonomy is not a traditional Chinese concept, veracity is.”) See also, Huang, X. Butow, P. Meiser, B. Goldstein, D., “Attitudes and Information Needs of Chinese Migrant Cancer Patients and Their Relatives,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Medicine 29 (1999): 207–213 (confirming same findings among 36 Chinese–Australian cancer patients). However, see also Tzuh Tang, S. Lee, S.-Y., “Cancer Diagnosis and Prognosis in Taiwan: Patient Preferences Versus Experiences,” Psycho-Oncology 13, no. 1 (2003): 1–13, at 8. (Despite authors’ assertion that Asian cultures hold different views towards individuality and personal rights than Westerners, the study of 364 Taiwanese cancer patients data did not fully support this conclusion. There, Taiwanese patients “strongly proclaimed their superior rights to be informed about their disease over the family. In general, cancer patients had a higher preference for healthcare professionals to inform them than to inform their family members. They also preferred to receive information before their family members did….The argument that cancer patients from an Asian culture [i.e. Chinese/Taiwanese culture] have different preferences regarding being informed of their diagnosis and prognosis and that family members have legitimate superior power in decision making could not be supported by data from this group of cancer patients.”)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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Nearly half the African-American patients in this study − 12 of 25 respondents – wanted their provider to make medical decisions; five respondents wanted a joint decision; three patients wanted to make the decision themselves; and five responses could not be classified. Id., at 528.Google Scholar

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Beyond the scope of this paper, but also of interest to any considered evaluation of our informed consent law must be the question of whether it is physicians or other actors in the clinical setting that should be charged with disclosure of medical information. Understandably, the law identifies a single medical actor who has control over the relationship and can be held accountable for the behavior of others to charge with the informed consent duty to disclose. However, in another setting it would be fruitful to consider whether the model for a more extended informed consent conversation should admit for discussion (which already occurs) between patients and health professionals besides and in addition medical doctors.Google Scholar

See Levinson, W. et al., “Not All Patients Want to Participate in Decision Making: A National Study of Public Preferences,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 20, no. 6 (2005): 531–535, at 533 (citing studies by Deber, Charles, and others, finding the majority of patients prefer to rely on physicians to make treatment decisions.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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Specifically, the Canterbury court required disclosure of material risks and defined those thusly: “A risk is material when a reasonable person, in what the physician knows or should know to be the patient's position, would be likely to attach significance to the risk in deciding whether or not to forego the proposed therapy.” Canterbury v. Spence, 464 F.2d 772 (D.C. Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1065 (1972).Google Scholar

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It is outside the scope of this paper to explore the variety of ethical systems that exist to inform the overall field of bioethics, and medical ethics in particular, except to the extent that these ethical systems derive from particular cultural, ethnic and religious minorities used as exemplars herein. Therefore, whether one chooses a utilitarian or consequentialist approach to ethical theory and seeks to maximize good while minimizing harm; or whether one adopts a deontological view of duty and obligation; or whether the more modern approaches such as liberal individualism or case-specific approach of casuistry is most appealing, where the question of informed consent is concerned, the fundamental problem of identifying a common moral system is solved in this paper by relying on the substantial consensus that bioethicists have achieved around three fundamental principles approach to bioethics. The principles of justice, beneficence and autonomy, identified in The Belmont Report of the National Commission for the Protecting of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1974–1978) represent a consensus foundational to a common theory of medical ethics. In November 1979, The Belmont Report was published in the Federal Register, available at <http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.htm> and to this day articulates the unifying ethical principles which underlie human subject research and clinical ethics today. See, 45 C.F.R. Pt. 46. While principlism, as this ethical theory has come to be called, is not without its critics (see, e.g., Arras, J. D., “Principles and Particularity: The Roles of Cases in Bioethics,” Indiana Law Journal 69 (1994): 983–1014, at 991) few would disagree that these three values, applied to clinical and research medicine, constitute the core of Western bioethical theory.Google Scholar

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There are a host of reasons why this may be true. Perhaps women are represented in the reported cases disproportionately because only the most egregious informed consent fact patterns are tried and women are more often victims of individual rights’ violations. Alternatively, perhaps women are the primary consumers of certain types of health care and those providers are more often open to negligence claims due to the nature of their practices. The list of possible explanations is long. And to hazard a guess without further study of these cases, the types of consent cases women bring, the actual incidence of their success and failure, and other empirical data, little more can be said at this juncture.Google Scholar

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Damages for the patient were fixed at $380,000.00 and for her husband, the jury awarded a total of $60,000.00 for present and future loss of consortium.Google Scholar

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In the section that follows, I argue that the fiduciary model, in fact, is preferable.Google Scholar

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See, Quintanilla, 133 Cal. App. 4th at 116–17 (court concludes that in absence of translation of consent document cannot know whether recitels were understood.)Google Scholar

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In Lockett v. Goodill, for example, 430 P.2d 589, 591 (Wash. 1967) a Washington court found “the relationship of patients and physicians is a fiduciary one of the highest degree.Google Scholar