Programme : What is the role of informed consent in medical research? : Abstract of keynote presentation
Informed consent and its actors: puzzle, maze or Babel tower?
Anne Cambon-Thomsen
INSERM, French national centre for scientific research (CNRS), France
Defining the best interest of the patient may be an exercise in itself. Assuming this is done, informed consent is usually considered as a pillar of medical ethics in terms of expression of the free will of the patient and insuring his/her information and autonomous decision. Informed consent has various features and involves various actors. We will concentrate on informed consent in relation with different categories of research. The process starts long before a medical doctor is proposing the consent form to sign to a patient: preparing the written information and the consent form template, input from legal expert and research ethics committee, sometimes testing this on a sample of persons for understanding and adequation. The modalities of presenting information and form, the steps of formulating or answering questions as well as the conditions of the dialogue, the time allocated for deciding and the ways to withdraw consent are variable. The kinds of biomedical research protocols are also variable. We aim to elaborate on how the kind of research, the conditions of preparation of the documents, the process itself and the input of the various actors involved may influence the final output of informed consent. Is informed consent a way to elaborate an informed decision, a mean to foster the process of dialogue between medical doctors, researchers, patients or healthy participants to research, or a ritual that has changed its original aim ?
Email: cambon@cict.fr
More: Read biography >
This conference is arranged by Cesagen at the universities of Lancaster and Cardiff and the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics at Uppsala University.