Using 'consent' as a transitive verb - such as 'patients will be consented' - is common in clinical trial documents, and extends to journals of the BMJ group[1,2]. Sadly, the online dictionary Wiktionary finds this usage to be specific to medicine, defining it as 'To cause to sign a consent form'[3]. As should be obvious, 'causing' consent would violate the ethical principle of voluntary participation[4]. One assumes that this did not, in fact, happen in the cited studies. Nevertheless, language can shape attitudes as well as the reverse[5] and so, in word as well as deed, study participants, rather than researchers, should do the consenting.

1. Hogg K, Hinchliffe E, Halsam S, Valkov A, Lecky F. Is ischaemia- modified albumin a test for venous thromboembolism? Emerg Med J published online June 5, 2011 doi: emermed-2011-200041.

2. Dave M, Johnson LA, Walk ST, et al. A randomised trial of sheathed versus standard forceps for obtaining uncontaminated biopsy specimens of microbiota from the terminal ileum. Gut 2011;60(8):1043-9.

3. Anonymous. Consent. 2011. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/consent.

4. World Medical Association. Declaration of Helsinki: World Medical Association, 2008.

5. Ogunnaike O, Dunham Y, Banaji MR. The language of implicit preferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2010;46(6):999-1003

Conflict of Interest:

None declared