In a case decided by Supreme Court of India, SCI, Civil Appeal No. 1949 of 2004, 16.01.2008, Samira Kohli vs Dr. Prabha Manchanda and Anr, B.N. Agrawal, P.P. Naolekar and R.V. Raveendran, JJ, the following was observed: “Lord Bridge however made it clear that when questioned specifically by the patient about the risks involved in a particular treatment proposed, the doctor’s duty is to answer truthfully and as fully as the questioner requires. He further held that remote risk of damage (referred to as risk at 1 or 2%) need not be disclosed but if the risk of damage is substantial (referred to as 10% risk), it may have to be disclosed. Lord Scarman, in minority, was inclined to adopt the more stringent test laid down in Canterbury.”

The Court further observed that in India we may not follow the stringent consent as is the practice in the west.

“33. We may note here that courts in Canada and Australia have moved towards Canterbury standard of disclosure and informed consent - vide Reibl v. Hughes (1980) 114 DLR (3d.) 1 decided by the Canadian Supreme Court and Rogers v. Whittaker 1992 (109) ALR 625 decided by the High Court of Australia. Even in England there is a tendency to make the doctor’s duty to inform more stringent than Bolam’s test adopted in Sidaway. Lord Scarman’s minority view in Sidaway favouring Canterbury, in course of time, may ultimately become the law in England. A beginning has been made in Bolitho v. City and Hackney HA 1998 1 AC 232 and Pearce v. United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust 1998 (48) BMLR 118. We have however, consciously preferred the ‘real consent’ concept evolved in Bolam and Sidaway in preference to the ‘reasonably prudent patient test’ in Canterbury, having regard to the ground realities in medical and healthcare in India. But if medical practitioners and private hospitals become more and more commercialized, and if there is a corresponding increase in the awareness of patient’s rights among the public, inevitably, a day may come when we may have to move towards Canterbury. But not for the present.”

“22. The stringent standards regarding disclosure laid down in Canterbury, as necessary to secure an informed consent of the patient, was not accepted in the English courts. In England, standard applicable is popularly known as the Bolam test, first laid down in Bolam v. Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 2 All.E.R. 118. McNair J., in a trial relating to negligence of a medical practitioner, while instructing the Jury, stated thus:

1. A doctor is not negligent, if he has acted in accordance with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of medical men skilled in that particular art. - Putting it the other way round, a doctor is not negligent, if he is acting in accordance with such a practice, merely because there is a body of opinion that takes a contrary view. At the same time, that does not mean that a medical man can obstinately and pig-headedly carry on with some old technique if it has been proved to be contrary to what is really substantially the whole of informed medical opinion.
2. When a doctor dealing with a sick man strongly believed that the only hope of cure was submission to a particular therapy, he could not be criticized if, believing the danger involved in the treatment to be minimal, did not stress them to the patient.
3. In order to recover damages for failure to give warning the plaintiff must show not only that the failure was negligent but also that if he had been warned he would not have consented to the treatment.”