Changes made in 2017 to the World Medical Association Physician’s Pledge strive to keep in step with geopolitical trends by addressing patient autonomy and collegiality.
AMA J Ethics. 2019;21(9):E796-800. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2019.796.
One of the many doors money and power often open gives access to opioids where they would otherwise be withheld without strict oversight and management. Elvis Presley provides perhaps the most famous example of unmanaged access to drugs.
Physicians make patients aware of those interventions that they (the patients) may then refuse. In short, informed consent is less about patient decisions than it is about restraining physicians.
The first women’s movement in the mid-nineteenth century endorsed anesthesia during childbirth and some of the very patterns of obstetric practice that became anathema to the natural childbirth movement a century later.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(3):253-257. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.3.msoc1-1503.