I don't think it’s nearly as simple as "They should not do anything without someone’s consent." There are good reasons to require informed consent in most cases, but there are also very good exceptions. Consider cardiac defibrillators. No one questions that these have saved tens of thousands of lives since their being brought into service. If the inventors had to get informed consent to test one of these on a human, how would they ever have brought it to market? (You can't ask the unconscious and dying heart attack victim.)
A more current debate is around testing artificial blood. The stuff has a year long shelf life (vs less than a month for blood), doesn’t require a donor, doesn’t carry disease, doesn't require refrigeration (making it great for ambulances and the military), and may reduce the risk of heart attack compared to transfused blood. Of course, all the potential patients this product could help come in the hospital unconscious from severe bleeding. Should we sit them up and ask if they'd like to participate?
There definitely need to be rules around trials that legitimately cannot obtain consent, but if I read that article right that’s exactly the point of what the FDA is doing. They’re revising their rules for trails of emergency medical care where consent is impossible to obtain.
Please remember that patient consent is not the only safeguard against unethical medical research. Lab tests, animal trials, chemical studies, and consent-based testing are all in the FDAs bag of requirements among many others. These other methods are used whenever possible before the FDA allows clinical trials on humans, consent based or otherwise.
To read what the FDA is actually planning to do around supporting trials in emergency medicine check out:
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2006/NEW01439.html