PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Kenneth Boyd TI - The impossibility of informed consent? AID - 10.1136/medethics-2014-102308 DP - 2015 Jan 01 TA - Journal of Medical Ethics PG - 44--47 VI - 41 IP - 1 4099 - http://jme.bmj.com/content/41/1/44.short 4100 - http://jme.bmj.com/content/41/1/44.full SO - J Med Ethics2015 Jan 01; 41 AB - The problematic nature of informed consent to medical treatment and research, and its relation to autonomy, trust and clinical practice, has been addressed on many occasions and from a variety of ethical perspectives in the pages of the Journal of Medical Ethics. This paper gives an account of how discussion of these issues has developed and changed, by describing a number of significant contributions to these debates which provide examples of ‘doing good medical ethics’ over the 40 years of the Journal's publication.