Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Participants
- Declarations of personal interest
- Preface
- 1 Genetic aetiology of infertility
- 2 Disorders of sex development
- 3 Preimplantation genetic diagnosis: current practice and future possibilities
- 4 Ethical aspects of saviour siblings: procreative reasons and the treatment of children
- 5 Epigenetics, assisted reproductive technologies and growth restriction
- 6 Fetal stem cell therapy
- 7 Prenatal gene therapy
- 8 Ethical aspects of stem cell therapy and gene therapy
- 9 Fetal dysmorphology: the role of the geneticist in the fetal medicine unit in targeting diagnostic tests
- 10 Fetal karyotyping: what should we be offering and how?
- 11 Non-invasive prenatal diagnosis: the future of prenatal genetic diagnosis?
- 12 Non-invasive prenatal diagnosis for fetal blood group status
- 13 Selective termination of pregnancy and preimplantation genetic diagnosis: some ethical issues in the interpretation of the legal criteria
- 14 Implementation and auditing of new genetics and tests: translating genetic tests into practice in the NHS
- 15 New advances in prenatal genetic testing: the parent perspective
- 16 Informed consent: what should we be doing?
- 17 Consensus views arising from the 57th Study Group: Reproductive Genetics
- Index
16 - Informed consent: what should we be doing?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Participants
- Declarations of personal interest
- Preface
- 1 Genetic aetiology of infertility
- 2 Disorders of sex development
- 3 Preimplantation genetic diagnosis: current practice and future possibilities
- 4 Ethical aspects of saviour siblings: procreative reasons and the treatment of children
- 5 Epigenetics, assisted reproductive technologies and growth restriction
- 6 Fetal stem cell therapy
- 7 Prenatal gene therapy
- 8 Ethical aspects of stem cell therapy and gene therapy
- 9 Fetal dysmorphology: the role of the geneticist in the fetal medicine unit in targeting diagnostic tests
- 10 Fetal karyotyping: what should we be offering and how?
- 11 Non-invasive prenatal diagnosis: the future of prenatal genetic diagnosis?
- 12 Non-invasive prenatal diagnosis for fetal blood group status
- 13 Selective termination of pregnancy and preimplantation genetic diagnosis: some ethical issues in the interpretation of the legal criteria
- 14 Implementation and auditing of new genetics and tests: translating genetic tests into practice in the NHS
- 15 New advances in prenatal genetic testing: the parent perspective
- 16 Informed consent: what should we be doing?
- 17 Consensus views arising from the 57th Study Group: Reproductive Genetics
- Index
Summary
Introduction: consent, choices and decisions
The concept of informed consent is central to the delivery of ethical healthcare services. Informed consent starts from the assumption that, following the provision of appropriate information, and based on his or her expertise, a clinician recommends a course of action to which the individual is asked to consent. Informing patients about the potential risks and consequences of a medical procedure is now considered essential to good practice and psychological preparation for such procedures has been shown to be linked to improved patient outcomes. Within reproductive genetic services, however, the term informed choice has come to be preferred over informed consent. Choosing to have prenatal screening, for example for Down syndrome, is not directly equivalent to consenting to a surgical procedure or even screening for conditions such as breast cancer, although many of the issues are related.
In contrast to informed consent, an informed choice starts from the assumption that, once appropriate information has been provided, the course of action should be chosen by the patient rather than the clinician. In most cases, the only therapeutic intervention on offer following a diagnosis of abnormality via prenatal testing is termination of pregnancy. For this reason, most clinicians accept that prenatal testing choices should reflect the values of the individual woman and her partner. Testing policy and related guidelines reflect this viewpoint and require that information about the testing process should support individual choice by being balanced and non-directive.
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- Reproductive Genetics , pp. 205 - 216Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009