Alexander Morgan Capron
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262027465
- eISBN:
- 9780262320825
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027465.003.0013
- Subject:
- Biology, Bioethics
Informed consent is usually thought of as the ethical cornerstone of research with human beings yet over the past thirty years a largegap has opened between informed consent as an object of ...
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Informed consent is usually thought of as the ethical cornerstone of research with human beings yet over the past thirty years a largegap has opened between informed consent as an object of veneration and its actual role as a governing concept in research with human subjects. This chapter argues that our failure to recognize that gap—and to make necessary policy adjustments—should be on the minds of the drafters of any proposal to reframe the federal regulations for research with human beings.Such attention would be particularly fitting because the federal rules themselves bear much of the responsibility for the diminishing importance of informed consent in research.Less
Informed consent is usually thought of as the ethical cornerstone of research with human beings yet over the past thirty years a largegap has opened between informed consent as an object of veneration and its actual role as a governing concept in research with human subjects. This chapter argues that our failure to recognize that gap—and to make necessary policy adjustments—should be on the minds of the drafters of any proposal to reframe the federal regulations for research with human beings.Such attention would be particularly fitting because the federal rules themselves bear much of the responsibility for the diminishing importance of informed consent in research.
