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Pros And Cons Of Informed Consent

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Apart from ethics, legal aspects also defined the respect accorded to the dead. For instance, the legal aspects defined the limits of informed consent and dignity in dying (assisted suicide). Besides, concerns for the dead also informed legal jurisprudence, in the NHS Trust vs Bland case, the courts argued that the commonly held beliefs among the living towards the dead were sufficient reason for them to be regarded as law regardless of the fact that it was difficult to prove the rationality of such arguments (Sperling 2008, p. 45). The case illustrated that the family had a significant role in providing informed consent and in approving the dignified death of the subject. In the recent past, there was a raging debate on the merits of informed consent largely because the arguments advanced in defence of informed consent were largely based on fallible arguments rather than empirical evidence (O’Neill 2003, p. 4). Notably, informed consent encompassed other common facets of human life including marriage, and daily transactions. However, O’Neill (2003, p. 4) argued that informed consent was not legally binding unless all parties were saware of what their commitment entailed and they participated in the process willingly. It was noted that in the recent past the essence of informed consent in the medical practice had increasingly become apparent. Nonetheless, informed consent had fundamental limitations from a legal standpoint. For instance,

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