The ethics of cardiac arrest research

Abstract

In cardiac arrest research, prior informed consent is not available to resolve the conflict between the rights and well-being of subjects and the possible benefit to future patients. The right to autonomy is the fundamental right that is protected by the legal doctrine of informed consent. As a fundamental right, it cannot be balanced against other goods. Rather, it is a constraint, or trump, on the balancing of goods and can be overridden only for a narrow range of reasons: its recognition in a given case conflicts with another basic right, infringing the right will prevent great harm to others, and excluding a particular case from its scope will recognize and advance the right in the long run. Proxy consent, deferred consent, and presumed consent to cardiac arrest research are examined to determine if they qualify as justified infringements of the right to autonomy. The conclusion is that only presumed consent can be used, provided that the researcher can honestly say that outside of the randomized clinical trial of two or more treatments, a physician would have no basis for choosing one over the others.