In a significant blow to patient autonomy, informed consent has been quietly revoked just 77 years after it was codified in the Nuremberg Code.
On the 21st of December 2023, as we were frantically preparing for the festive season, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a final ruling to amend a provision of the 21st Century Cures Act. This allowed
…an exception from the requirement to obtain informed consent when a clinical investigation poses no more than a minimal risk to the human subject…
This ruling went into effect on January 22nd, 2024, which means it’s already standard practice across America.
So, what is the 21st Century Cures Act? It is a controversial Law enacted by the 114th United States Congress in January 2016 with strong support from the pharmaceutical industry. The Act was designed to
…accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st-century cures, and for other purposes [?]…[emphasis added]
Some of the provisions within this Act make for uncomfortable reading. For example, the Act supported:
High-risk, high-reward research [Sec. 2036].
Novel clinical trial designs [Sec. 3021]
Encouraging vaccine innovation [Sec. 3093].
This Act granted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) legal protection to pursue high-risk, novel vaccine research. A strong case could be made that these provisions capture all the necessary architecture required for much of the evil that transpired over the past four years.
Continued here:
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-era-of-informed-consent-is-over/
Recent Comments