Thousands of patients are suing AstraZeneca in US courts, claiming the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel caused weight gain and diabetes. The patients allege Seroquel, its second biggest selling drug worth $4.5bn (£2.7bn) a year, was marketed without adequate warning about possible side effects such as massive weight gain and the development of diabetes. However, this is denied by the company.
Three women in Namibia are suing the state for allegedly being sterilised without their informed consent after being diagnosed as HIV positive. The women say the doctors and nurses should have informed them properly about what was happening. The rights group representing them, the Legal Assistance Centre, says it has documented 15 cases of alleged HIV sterilisation in hospitals since 2008. A march in their support is taking place in Windhoek as the case begins.
Children born as a result of assisted reproductive technology (ART) have a higher risk of major congenital malformation than previously thought, show results from a study presented at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics in Gothenburg, Sweden, on 14 June.
Until 2008, if doctors followed the General Medical Council's (GMC's) guidance on providing information prior to obtaining a patient's consent to treatment, they would be going beyond what was technically required by the law. It was hoped that the common law would catch up with this guidance and encourage respect for patients' autonomy by facilitating informed decision-making. Regrettably, this has not occurred. For once, the law's inability to keep up with changing medical practice and standards is not the problem. The authors argue that while the common law has moved forward and started to recognise the importance of patient autonomy and informed decision-making, the GMC has taken a step back in their 2008 guidance on consent. Indeed, doctors are now required to tell their patients less than they were in 1998 when the last guidance was produced. This is an unfortunate development and the authors urge the GMC to revisit their guidance.
A cardiac surgeon with an international reputation has been given a formal warning by the General Medical Council for undertaking an “adventurous” procedure for which he was not adequately trained and for which he did not obtain informed consent.
Farrell and Brazier set out the arguments for obtaining specific informed consent for allogeneic blood transfusion.1 They do not deal with allogeneic blood products, but I think their article can be assumed to cover this too. This subject is controversial, and the question of how to seek and record consent has been the subject of a recent consultation by the Department of Health’s Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs. A question Farrell and Brazier avoid is who should be responsible for gaining informed consent? Should it be those who provide the blood (the transfusion service, probably most informed about the risks) or those who prescribe it (probably least informed)? This is of crucial importance in the debate and has considerable resource implications.
Within transfusion medicine, the question of whether separate informed consent should be obtained from patients for blood transfusion has provoked considerable debate. There has long been support for such an approach in the United States.1 A BMJ editorial in 1997 made it clear that reform was on the professional agenda in the United Kingdom, despite the established position that obtaining general consent for medical treatment included consent for blood transfusion.2 At the time, however, professional consensus proved elusive because of concerns over a range of practical problems, including who should be responsible for obtaining such consent and in what circumstances it should be obtained.3 The issue has now been brought to the fore again, highlighted by the recent stakeholder consultation launched by the UK government’s independent Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissue and Organs.
ROMA - I punti salienti della legge sul testamento biologico approvata oggi alla Camera, che per il varo definitivo dovrà tornare al Senato, sono almeno due: le dichiarazioni anticipate di trattamento non sono vincolanti per i medici ed escludono la possibilità di sospendere nutrizione e idratazione, salvo in casi terminali. Inoltre, sono applicabili solo se il paziente ha un'accertata assenza di attività cerebrale.