Science for the People #606 Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent
Even the luckiest and healthiest of us will interact with the medical systems we live in eventually, and navigating these systems can be frustrating, scary, and intimidating. In this labyrinth filled with jargon, bureaucracy, and opaque layers of expertise we often don't understand, we expect to have some control over what happens to our bodies and to get a say in opting in or out of what treatments are offered, in particular if they are experimental. But this assumption does not always hold true, and we are not always aware of when our ability consent to medical research has been side-stepped. Rachelle Saunders speaks with Harriet Washington, ethicist and author of the book "Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent", about how modern medical research can bypass our understanding of medical consent.
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