Question

Discuss the following proposal: there are a million little risks for any treatment. Informed consent requires that the physician explain each in detail. If you argue that some risks though not all should be disclosed, explain how the line should be drawn between those which need to be disclosed and those which need not be disclosed.

Answer 1

Ans) Doctors must fully inform their patients about the risks involved in any proposed medical procedure or treatment. In both medical and legal terminology, this is called "informed consent."

- If a doctor does not get informed consent from a patient, and the patient is injured, the patient may have grounds to sue the doctor for medical malpractice.

- A doctor doesn't have to tell a patient about every possible thing that might happen as a result of a procedure or treatment, but only those risks that are important. For the most part, states use one of two standards to determine this.

- In states that use this first standard, an injured patient who is suing a doctor must hire a medical expert to testify that other competent doctors would have informed the patient of this risk. The doctor being sued will also hire an expert to testify that a competent doctor would not necessarily have disclosed the risk to the patient.

- In the end, the crux of the argument is usually over whether the risk was statistically likely enough to make disclosure worthwhile. Simply because a particular bad result is a remote possibility does not mean it must be disclosed -- even if that bad result comes to pass.