Consent to innovative treatment

Much political, media and academic attention has focused on: (1) the legal test for evaluating whether there has been a breach of duty in the provision of innovative treatment; and (2) the extent to which the law reform proposed by Lord Saatchi in the Medical Innovation Bill (MIB) was necessary or desirable to relieve doctors of (perceived) legal strictures preventing innovative treatments. However, comparatively little attention has focused on the requirement that patients must provide consent to innovative treatment. In this paper we argue that the English and Australian law relating to consent is capable of application in the context of innovative treatment so as to provide certainty for health professionals and promote patient autonomy.