Informed consent does not mean rational consent

If all decisions by the patient could be made on an intelligent basis; if all patients had sufficient scientific background and sufficient knowledge of the human body; if the decisions of all patients could be sufficiently free of the fear of the unknown, of superstition and other extraneous influences upon the decision‐making processes; if all patients were able to understand the physician and communicate with him; if the physician were not faced with these and various other impediments, doctor‐patient accord would be a problem of manageable proportions.1