ABSTRACT
Despite the general acceptance and practice of informed consent in medical intervention and research ethics, there are still many challenges in recent years. There is a general perception that consent has become a formality and not really tailored to the patients’ situation with their medical literacy and religious/cultural backgrounds. The first part of this book re-evaluates informed consent in multicultural contexts. There is an unease with the overtly individualistic conception of autonomy that undergirds the process of informed consent championed in Western medicine. It might be timely to reconsider autonomy as relational—where family members, community and religious leaders can play an important role in the consent process. The second part of the book examines the socio-religious viewpoints of informed consent from Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. There are many theoretical problems with the autonomous self as the foundation of informed consent. For Eastern cultures, selfhood either is illusory or derives meaning through interdependence with nature, family or community. Western religions define self-identity in relation to a transcendent God. In all cultures, sacrifice is prominent in the framework of informed consent, where the patients act virtuously in solidarity for the greater common good.
