Relational Autonomy and Multiculturalism

The principle of autonomy, through various court rulings, gradually became part of medical practice and tradition in the second half of the 1800s, notably when the emergence of surgical anaesthesia began to raise serious questions regarding informed consent. In fact, surgical anaesthesia was initially used not only to avoid pain but also to combat patients resistance to operations Physicians in the 1800s, as is well known, believed that opposition to an effective cure was a clear sign of incompetence and were, for the good of that patient, permitted to proceed against his or her will. In the late 1800s, American courts were besieged by complaints of patients who considered themselves unwitting victims of surgery. In the early 1900s, the issue of mandatory vaccinations also came to the fore, resulting in moral conflicts relating to autonomy. Furthermore, in this period, some countries had proceeded with the compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded, raising further conflict and discussions on the issue of autonomy. What irreversibly decided the indispensability of the right to autonomy, however, was the scourge of Nazism, which inflicted Europe with all its violence and horrors in the 1930s and 1940s. Copyright © 2010 Cambridge University Press.