Medical informed consent: clarity or confusion?

Until the mid-twentieth century, rarely would a patient question a doctor's diagnosis or proposed treatment. The "good bedside manner" was used to describe a doctor who made the effort to explain medical procedures to his patients. Recently, however, the legal profession has begun questioning medical practitioners about treatments that have gone wrong. In this paper, the writers trace the concept of medical informed consent and explore whether the laws serve to protect and inform the public or whether they merely confuse the issues.