Issues in Medical Law and Ethics

Thirty years ago, English jurist Patrick Devlin wrote: "Is it not a pleasant tribute to the medical profession that by and large it has been able to manage its relations with its patients ... without the aid of lawyers and law makers". Medical interventions at the beginnings and the endings of life have rendered that assessment dated if not defeated. This book picks up some of the most important of those developments and reflects on the legal and social consequences of this metamorphosis over the past ten years, and will be of interest to students of law, sociology and ethics who want a considered and critical introduction to, and reflection on, key issues in these pivotal moments of human life.

Derek Morgan

Part 1 Medical Law, Tragic Choices and the Risk Society; Chapter 1 What Is Medical Law?; Chapter 2 Medical Law and the Land of Metamorphoses; Chapter 3 Biomedical Diplomacy: Tragic Choices and the Risk Society; Part 2 Some Language Questions; Chapter 4 Health Rights, Ethics and Justice: The Opportunity Costs of Rhetoric; Chapter 5 Feminisms' Accounts of Reproductive Technology 1 In writing of 'feminisms', I do so in the sense implied by Margaret Davies in her illuminating analysis, Asking the Law Question, 1994, Sydney: LBC, p 172ff. Throughout this essay I have followed my customary practice of referring to and citing from only materials which I have to hand in my study when I write. Each reference in support of a proposition should, then, be regarded only as representative or emblematic of literature which could have been cited. Glaring omissions from my citations might charitably be understood in this light; more likely, in fact, they are based on ignorance. The usual suspects have not read this essay; therefore, the usual caveat is omitted; Chapter 6 Where Do I Own My Body?(And why?); Part 3 Intros: Entrances and Arrivals; Chapter 7 The Legal Status of the Embryo and the Fetus; Chapter 8 Legal And Ethical Dilemmas Of Fetal Sex Identification And Gender Selection; Part 4 Attempts and Failures in Medical Law the Case of Genetics and Risk Society; Chapter 9 The Troubled Helix: Legal Aspects of the New Genetics; Chapter 10 After Genetics; Part 5 Outros: Exits And DePartures; Chapter 11 Tragic Choices and Modern Death: Some Bland Reflections; Chapter 12 Odysseus and the Binding Directive: Only a Cautionary Tale? *This Chapter was originally drafted as a paper for the First National Palliative Care Conference, Reading, September 1993. Versions of it have benefited from the critical Visiting Researcher at Det Retsvidenskabelige Institut C, University of Copenhagen. I am grateful to Joseph Lookofsky, Head of the Institute, and Linda Nielsen for their kindnesses to me as their guest. It needs hardly be stated that the usual caveat applies. But I will; it does;