The past few decades have seen patient autonomy ascend to a prime position in health care. Patient consent is seen as a key component to expression of autonomy. Yet, interventions may also be justified without consent because they are deemed to be in the public interest. We observe some subtle shifts in balance in these justifications in health care and illustrate these with a range of examples. We hope thereby to stimulate a more explicit debate so that health-care professionals can (...) manage these competing interests. (shrink)

Writing in 1912, before the Bolshevik Revolution, American socialist John Spargo said that it was “inconceivable” that a democratic socialist society would ever abolish the “sacred right” of freedom of publication which had been won at so great a sacrifice. According to Spargo, “every Socialist writer of note” agreed with Karl Kautsky that the freedom of the press, and of literary production in general, is an “essential condition” of democratic socialism.