A problem for achieving informed choice

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 29 (4):255-265 (2008)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Most agree that, if all else is equal, patients should be provided with enough information about proposed medical therapies to allow them to make an informed decision about what, if anything, they wish to receive. This is the principle of informed choice; it is closely related to the notion of informed consent. Contemporary clinical trials are analysed according to classical statistics. This paper puts forward the argument that classical statistics does not provide the right sort of information for informing choice. The notion of probability used by classical statistics is complex and difficult to communicate. Therapeutic decisions are best informed by statistical approaches that assign probabilities to hypotheses about the benefits and harms of therapies. Bayesian approaches to statistical inference provide such probabilities.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,202

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Genotyping in clinical trials: Towards a principle of informed request.Hans-Martin Sass - 1998 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 23 (3):288 – 296.
Foucault, Feminism, and Informed Choice.Carolyn Ells - 2003 - Journal of Medical Humanities 24 (3-4):213-228.
Informed consent: a primer for clinical practice.Deborah Bowman - 2012 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by John Spicer & Rehana Iqbal.
Informed Consent and the Requirement to Ensure Understanding.Tom Walker - 2011 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 29 (1):50-62.
Informed consent and genetic information.O. O'Neill - 2001 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 32 (4):689-704.
Choosing Health and the inner citadel.P. Allmark - 2006 - Journal of Medical Ethics 32 (1):3-6.
Can Broad Consent be Informed Consent?M. Sheehan - 2011 - Public Health Ethics 4 (3):226-235.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
135 (#131,586)

6 months
7 (#339,156)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Adam La Caze
University of Queensland

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic & Amos Tversky - 1985 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36 (3):331-340.
.Julian Savulescu - 2007 - Oxford University Press.
Some limits of informed consent.O. O'Neill - 2003 - Journal of Medical Ethics 29 (1):4-7.

View all 9 references / Add more references