Informed Consent Case Study

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formative first years of their life. Even in the case of healthy children, parents and pediatricians can debate what is best for the child. Personal preference and other areas such as religion can factor into a parent’s decision. A perfect example is the right of some parents to refuse certain medical treatments or vaccinations. Non-clinical brain scans in children today require informed consent not only from the parent, but also the child in most cases. General research studies are common, but there are also situations in which a child may be experiencing a relatively minor condition that may prompt a brain scan opportunity. Simply put, the elements of informed consent includes competency to make health care decisions, full disclosure …show more content…
As it can directly relate to what the GNS has proposed, Fenton also stated that given the risks to children, it is difficult to see how policy makers could endorse looking at images of brain states correlated with certain behaviors across a population rather than looking at the behavior of individuals (Fenton et al., 2009). Mandatory scans of children by the GNS, regardless of how it may be administered, would only compound the current issues and make them more frequent. The child may grow up mistakenly believing that they are predisposed to crime and have no control. Parents may adopt the same …show more content…
The real concern is whether the costs would be shared by the government, health insurance, parents, or a combination thereof. Those are the direct costs. Indirect costs would result from the ways that the data would be interpreted. Medications, behavioral programs, follow-up visits with doctors, and possibly even surgery would be costly. Currently, an internet search of the cost of brain scans or MRIs, reveal that the price can range from two hundred dollars to approximately five thousand dollars, depending on the region and assuming no insurance. Headache sufferers in the United States get one billion dollars’ worth of brain scans annually, a tremendous waste of money and resources, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Medical School (Ericson, 2014). It appears as though a small portion of these scans actually reveal anything treatable. Getting a brain scan is seemingly becoming similar to taking an aspirin for a headache. It could be a type of placebo that will aid in making the patient feel as though everything was done for them to rule out a serious