Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics
Abstract
Informed consent is a central topic in contemporary biomedical ethics. Yet attempts to set defensible and feasible standards for consenting have led to persistent difficulties. In Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics, first published in 2007, Neil Manson and Onora O'Neill set debates about informed consent in medicine and research in a fresh light. They show why informed consent cannot be fully specific or fully explicit, and why more specific consent is not always ethically better. They argue that consent needs distinctive communicative transactions, by which other obligations, prohibitions, and rights can be waived or set aside in controlled and specific ways. Their book offers a coherent, wide-ranging and practical account of the role of consent in biomedicine which will be valuable to readers working in a range of areas in bioethics, medicine and law.
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Manson and O'Neill argue that more specific consent is not always ethically better and is difficult to achieve in practice; consent requires unique communicative transactions.
“Manson and O’Neill [87] argue that more specific consent is not always ethically better and is difficult to achieve in practice. Consent requires unique communicative transactions.”
From Ethics and governance of trustworthy medical artificial intelligence (2023) · cites this paper as [87]
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- Authors
- Manson, N. C., & O'Neill, O.
- Affiliations
- Lancaster University (GB)
- ORCID
- Manson, Neil C.
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 2007-03-29
- OpenAlex
- W189803326
- Cited by
- 800
- References
- 77
- Citations by year
- 2026: 47 · 2025: 80 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 60 · 2020: 41 · 2019: 68 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 33 · 2016: 45 · 2015: 50 · 2014: 22 · 2013: 42 · 2012: 51
- FWCI
- 40.62
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University) (submittedVersion)
- DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Ethics and bioethics in healthcare
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Ethics in Clinical Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Medical and Health Sciences Research
- Keywords
- informed consent, biomedical ethics, medical research ethics, waiver of rights, explicit consent, bioethics
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