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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2010
Informed consent began as a way of protecting physicians against legal liability. It did so by requiring physicians to provide their patients with sufficient information so that the patients could assent to or withhold consent from a proffered medical treatment. It was also intended to be an accurate expression of the patient's wishes. As such, it established the conditions by which a patient could be held responsible for his decisions concerning medical treatment.
1. Dworkin G. The Theory and Practice of Autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1988:18.
2. How much information is appropriate and how it is transmitted depends on the culture in which the information is imparted. For a non-Western view, see Rodriguez P, Fins JJ. Islam and informed consent: Notes from Doha. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 2008;17:273–9.
3. Schneider CE. The Practice of Autonomy: Patients, Doctors and Medical Decisions. New York: Oxford University Press; 1998:xii.
4. See note 3, Schneider 1998:74.
5. Lidz CW, Meisel A. Informed Consent: A Study of Psychiatry. New York: Guilford Press; 1984:18.