Rejecting “Understanding”: An Ethical Proposal Whose Time Has Come

"Rejecting “Understanding”: An Ethical Proposal Whose Time Has Come." The American Journal of Bioethics, 19(5), pp. 41–42

This article refers to:

Exploring Understanding of “Understanding”: The Paradigm Case of Biobank Consent Comprehension

Notes

1. The latter question, on the other hand, is highly problematic. It seems obvious, at least theoretically, that if a threshold is a precondition for valid consent, and people believe that there should not be consequences of failing to meet this threshold, then they really are just backing down on the idea of a threshold in the first place.What is the point of a condition for valid consent if we do not care whether consent is thereby made invalid by the condition not being met?

2. For example, therapeutic misconception, in the form of a participant assuming that a trusted doctor would only recommend research that is individually good for him or her, could lead to a participant wanting to understand less about a study because of faulty assumptions about the context and the nature of the relationship with his or her physician. This type of context, for example, may set a bar on comprehending the purpose of the study, although other interventions to impact therapeutic misconception, such as a nonphysician consenter, would probably be much more effective and not require explicit understanding.