Informed consent: a critical part of modern medical research.

Informed consent is one of the great puzzles of modern medical research and practice. As Professor Henderson has argued in her article, there is ample reason to be concerned that many, and maybe all, of the goals announced for informed consent law and ethics have not been reached. In this article, I will review the goals that theorists and judges have assigned to the doctrine and discuss some of the evidence concerning the difficulties of meeting those goals. Finally, I will suggest some of the reasons that might account for our continued commitment to informed consent despite its difficulties.