ABSTRACT

Informed consent is often said to be a legal issue affecting the therapeutic professions as much discussed as little understood. This article develops an analysis of the concept of informed consent from a comparative perspective, dividing a number of relevant countries into two models – the prevailingly permissive and the prevailingly impositive one –, neither one of them allowing for extreme solutions such as the right to die, on the one hand, and the duty to be kept artificially alive beyond one’s own idea of human dignity, on the other. According to such distinction, and paying particular attention to the-law-in-action governing end of life decisions, the Author considers similarities and diversities, as well as evolving common trends.

Sommario: 

Abstract. – 1. Introduzione. – 2. Il consenso: origini e natura. – 3. Il riconoscimento a livello europeo (cenni). – 4. La modellistica proposta. – 5. Il modello a tendenza impositiva. – 5.1. La questione relativa alla limitazione della libertà. – 5.2. La questione relativa al principio di eguaglianza. – 5.3. Gli strumenti della flessibilità: la “bio-equity”. – 6. Il modello a tendenza permissiva. – 7. Considerazioni di sintesi.

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