This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Michelle H. Biros, MS, MD
Hennepin County Medical Center Minneapolis, Minn

Carin M. Olson, MD
University of Washington Seattle

Roger J. Lewis, MD, PhD
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Los Angeles, Calif

JAMA. 1995;274(15):1196.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.

—We appreciate the interest our consensus document has generated and welcome the opportunity to address the concerns of Drs Merz and Caplan. As these points illustrate, the problems surrounding informed consent in emergency research are complex.

We agree that prior expressions of the desires of patients should be respected. In circumstances in which advance directives are known, these wishes must be followed and would exclude such patients from resuscitation research. However, in most emergency research circumstances, those desires are unknown. The inability to determine the patient's prior wishes, to identify and locate a legally authorized representative, and often even to establish the identity of the critically ill or injured patient all contribute to the difficulty of the problem.

We also agree with the suggestion of Merz and Caplan that in some acute circumstances, it may be feasible to obtain prospective informed consent; our recommendations focus on those emergency . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?