The issue of consent

These proceedings have given rise to a clear question of whether the parents of the deceased children gave proper consent to the operations that their children underwent before their deaths.

I recognize that to make a declaration of consent or lack thereof runs the risk of transgressing the very line about which I have spoken on the issue of culpability. To declare that a particular operation occurred without proper consent gives almost immediate rise to the conclusion that the party, or parties participating in the operation engaged in an illegal act, perhaps amounting to an assault on the patient. That is a reasonable conclusion from a finding of a lack of consent.

However, the question of what patients (or in this case parents of patients) were and ought to have been told and, in the future, ought to be told, is a matter that merits the attention of this report. Readers will note later on in the text that the question of what parents were told or ought to have been told is commented upon, but in so doing I have adopted the approach suggested by the case law.