Written from the combined perspectives of a physician, lawyer, and social scientist, this book is the first reference work to provide a concise and practical overview of informed consent. Topics include the ethical theories and history of the principle of informed consent, all legal requirements for practitioners, and suggesions for making the interaction between doctor and patient clinically meaningful.

"A very good book indeed: there is scarcely an issue anyone has thought to raise about the topic which Childress fails to treat with sensitivity and good judgement....Future discussions of paternalism in health care will have to come to terms with the contentions of this book, which must be reckoned the best existing treatment of its subject."--Ethics. "A clear, scholarly and balanced analysis....This is a book I can recommend to physicians, ethicists, students of both fields, and to those most affected--the (...) patients themselves."--Edmund D. Pellegrino, John Carroll Professor of Medicine and Medical Humanities, Georgetown University Medical Center. (shrink)

Japan is unusual among industrialized countries in its reluctance to use brain criteria to determine death and harvest transplant organs. This results from public distrust of the medical profession due to an earlier incident, and from concern that technological interventions will threaten religious and cultural traditions surrounding death and dying. Public acceptance is growing, however, as medical professional groups and universities develop brain criteria, and as pressure from patients who could benefit from a transplant, as well as from foreign countries, (...) increases. (shrink)

Interest in the retrieval of organs from non-heart-beating cadaver donors has been rekindled by the success of transplantation of solid organs and the insufficient supply of donor organs currently obtained from heart-beating cadaver donors. There are currently two retrieval techniques being evaluated, the in situ cold perfusion approach and the controlled death approach. Both, however, raise ethical concerns. Reanimation is a new method which has been used successfully in animals. We believe this new approach overcomes the ethical objections raised to (...) these other methods. (shrink)