ABSTRACT
The view that concern for autonomy provides the ethical foundation for the doctrine of informed consent has come to be accepted as a truism within contemporary medical ethics. In their seminal work, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, for example, Beauchamp and Childress maintain that the “the primary justifi cation advanced for requirements of informed consent has been to protect autonomous choice.”1 Similarly, Faden and Beauchamp claim that an “analysis of the nature of autonomy provides the essential foundation for our analysis of the nature of informed consent,” while Appelbaum, Lidz, and Meisel hold that informed consent is “an ethical doctrine, rooted in our society’s cherished value of autonomy.”2 Moreover, the view that concern for autonomy provides the foundation for informed consent is not peculiar to bioethics; it is also received wisdom in legal discussions of this doctrine. For example, in the case that started the serious legal discussion of informed consent, Canterbury v. Spence, it was insisted that informed consent is required to secure “the patient’s right of self-determination.”3
