ArticleJournal of medical ethics2020
Non-maleficence and the ethics of consent to cancer screening.
Article in Journal of medical ethics, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Supplemental Screening as an Adjunct to Mammography for Breast Cancer Screening in People With Dense Breasts: A Health Technology Assessment.Ontario health technology assessment series · 2023Pooled it
- It depends on where you stand on screening: health professionals' awareness, perspectives, and approaches to overdiagnosis in cancer screening - a qualitative interview study.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- What Information on Mammographic Screening is Available to Women in Quebec, Ontario and Canada: Results from a Document Analysis.Public health ethics · 2026Article
- [The precautionary principle in preventive actions: considerations on an absence].Cadernos de saude publica · 2026Article
- Ethical Dimensions of Population-Based Lung Cancer Screening in Canada: Key Informant Qualitative Description Study.Public health ethics · 2024Article
- [A conceptual framework for good preventive practices (or for quaternary prevention)].Cadernos de saude publica · 2024Article
- Ethical and moral principles for oncology healthcare workers: A brief report from a Bioethics consortium emphasizing on need for education.Journal of education and health promotion · 2024Review
- Why do people choose not to take part in screening? Qualitative interview study of atrial fibrillation screening nonparticipation.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2023Article
- Informed Decision-Making and Capabilities in Population-based Cancer Screening.Public health ethics · 2022Article
- Novel drug candidates targeting Alzheimer's disease: ethical challenges with identifying the relevant patient population.Journal of medical ethics · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
Cancer screening programmes cause harm to individuals via overdiagnosis and overtreatment, even where they confer population-level benefit. Screening thus appears to violate the principle of non-maleficence, since it entails medically unnecessary harm to individuals. Can consent to screening programmes negate the moral significance of this harm? In therapeutic medical contexts, consent is used as a means of rendering medical harm morally permissible. However, in this paper, I argue that it is unclear that the model of consent used within therapeutic medicine can be applied unproblematically to preventive medicine. Invitation to screening changes the pragmatic norms and expectations of the patient-doctor encounter such that two key principles of consent may be violated. First, the pragmatics of a medical invitation are such that patients may fail to be adequately informed, since patients appear to assume medical invitations are made with their best interests in mind, even where information to the contrary is outlined. Second, screening invitations may place pressure on patients; in the context of a medical encounter, to make an invitation to screening may constitute an inducement to accept. In order to be sure that a patient's consent to a screening invitation is valid, we must make clear to patients that their decision to accept screening may be shaped not only by how information about screening is presented, but by the pragmatic form of the invitation itself.
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