The Limits to Surrogate Informed Consent in Health Care: Finding the Best Interests in the Postmodern World
Abstract
Informed consent (or the lack thereof) to the provision of health services to a minor is, as a rule, granted by the minor's statutory representatives. However, the public authority can reverse their decision if it is supposedly in the best interests of the child.
At the same time, the law exists in the frame of the postmodern society that is defined, among other features, by the scepticism regarding the existence (or at least the recognisability) of the objective truth. This chapter tries to answer the question of whether it is possible to justify the public authority's interventions in the process of finding the best interests of the child that normally takes place in the essentially personal relationship between the child and her or his parents.