The Urgent need for Informed Consent

      Informed consent means that a person is informed of what is involved before he agrees to it. It involves showing respect for a person's free will to choose.  It prevents a person from feeling cheated or duped into a situation that he otherwise would never have agreed to had he been properly informed. This can happen in reference to all things in life, such as employment, medical procedures, marriage, and religion. Below are some examples.

   
      For example, before undergoing any medical procedure or treatment, a patient has right to know what dangers are involved in order to assess the risk and decide whether to allow it or not. This also applies to prescription medicines. After all,  the medicinal side effects of these drugs can be much more horrible than the condition that they treat.  In that case, wisdom might require that we avoid the risk.  For example, one doctor prescribed antibiotics for a bladder infection. Upon reading the side effects, I discovered that such medicine was not recommended for people of my advanced age. The side effects were as bad as death itself.  Was I informed? Nope! Better yet, why had the  physician prescribing it for me in the first place?


     Informed consent is also essential in relation to marriage. Too many times people put on a masquerade during the courting phase of their relationship and then stop all pretenses once the marriage documents are signed. Then the other person suddnely  finds himself living wirth  a total stranger with whom he would never even have associated had he known the truth. So in order to avoid this extremely disagreeable scenario, it is essential to be informed so that your consent to marriage is based on reality and not on whom you might imagine the person to be.


     Then there is religion. For example, when I joined the Jehovah's Witnesses after a year of intensive Bible study, I had been never been told that they practiced disfellowshipping and shunning of those who fell by the wayside. Instead, this crucial information was casually and smugly mentioned by my former Bible study teacher a full three weeks after I was baptized at one of their conventions.  Understandably, my first reaction was to panic. I felt I had been duped into joining an organization whose policies I didn't feel comfortable with.

    I also felt that they had been unfair in not telling me about this very important facet of their worship. In hindsight, I should have spoken with the congregation overseer and told him I needed more time to reconsider. But all this could have been avoided by simply having the decency to make sure that a person knows what was is agreeing to before accepting the person for baptism.