The new medical conversation : media, patients, doctors, and the ethics of scientific communication / Dennis Mazur.

Key points needed for better communication. Introduction -- Media, science, doctors, and patients -- Basic terms -- The ethics of scientific communication : its interdisciplinary nature -- Perspectives on information and the scientist, the social scientist, and the philosopher -- The new medical conversation and the scientific information message -- The circumscription of information by the courts -- Expanded senses of information by ethicists and a psychiatrist -- Bioethicists respond to the judicial doctrine of informed consent -- Information, cultures, and caution -- How information reaches patients. What has been learned in research studies about "information" in the new medical conversation? -- Complex risk information : genetic information and future generations -- Communicating risk-benefit information today. Truth and bias in the way information is presented -- The move toward providing patients with "more information" of "different types" -- Communicating risk-benefit information in the future.

Egalitarian approaches to information -- Research on communication in the patient-physician relationship -- The longer information message : toward a fuller understanding of the "range of information" being discussed -- Decision support for patients : it's here, but what is it, why is it here, whom is it supposed to benefit, and where is it going?