Informed Consent in Dentistry: Can Change Impact Personal Injury Cases?

An excellent article appears in the Spring 2017 edition of the The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (vol. 45, pp. 77-94) written by Kevin I. Reid titled “Informed Consent in Dentistry.” The article discusses how informed consent is respecting the ethical right of an individual to make decisions about one’s body and only have actions undertaken on their body with authorization without undue influence. In order for informed consent to be considered valid in dentistry the following must occur: (1) the patient is competent and has the ability and capacity to understand and decide, (2) the dentist discloses material information, (3) the patient understands, (4) the patient is voluntarily entering the arrangement, and (5) the patient provides authorization to go ahead. Every patient however comes to a different degree of understanding to authorize treatment based on their prior dental experiences, education, motivation, attention, … Read more

Attending to the Patient in the Informed Consent Process

An interesting article titled “Personalized Disclosure by Information-on-Demand: Attending to Patients’ Needs in the Informed Consent Process” written by Gil Siegal, Richard J. Bonnie, and Paul S. Appelbaum appears in the Summer 2012 issue of the The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (vol. 40, issue 2, pages 359-367). A discussion is made of the current informed consent process and how it is the foundation of medical ethics and health law. Now is clear from the complications page of my website http://www.teethremoval.com/complications.html, I have numerous problems with the informed consent process. In the article the authors state “The underlying ethical principle on which informed consent rests — autonomy — embodies the idea that as rational moral agents, patients should be in command of decisions that relate to their bodies and lives. The corollary obligation of physicians — to respect and facilitate … Read more

Do Physicians and Researchers Profit and Trade Stock on Privileged Information

An interesting article titled “Do Physicians/Researchers Trade Stock Based on Privileged Information?” written by Elie Donath and Mark J. Eisenberg appears in the Summer 2012 issue of The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (vol. 40, issue 2, pages 391-393). Speculation is made that “…physicians/researchers are inappropriately profiting (by buying or selling stock) from information derived from advance copies of high-impact clinical trial data distributed by medical conferences or journals.” A case study is made looking at the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Up until 2008 ASCO selectively and discreetly distributed abstracts from all forthcoming presentations at the ASCO Conference to ASCO members 2 weeks prior to them becoming publicly accessible at the conference. The authors used multiple linear regression to look at the percentage change in stock price on the first trading day following the release of these abstracts. A … Read more