Issues in Medical Law and Ethics [Paperback]

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.

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.

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 undelCA