Bioethics, Medicine and the Criminal Law

This volume considers the ethical legitimacy of invoking the criminal law to regulate medical and scientific practice and bioethical issues.

Amel Alghrani (Edited by), Rebecca Bennett (Edited by), Suzanne Ost (Edited by)

9781107025127, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 November 2012

305 pages, 1 table
23.4 x 15.4 x 2.1 cm, 0.58 kg

'… this book is a major success. It is original, thought provoking, and covers a wide range of contemporary issues which everyone interested in bioethics, medicine, and the law will take pleasure in reading. While this book is aimed largely at an academic audience, it will definitely garner interest from practitioners, both medical and legal, scientists and students on undergraduate and postgraduate courses across the country.' Rob Heywood, Medical Law Review

Who should define what constitutes ethical and lawful medical practice? Judges? Doctors? Scientists? Or someone else entirely? This volume analyses how effectively criminal law operates as a forum for resolving ethical conflict in the delivery of health care. It addresses key questions such as: how does criminal law regulate controversial bioethical areas? What effect, positive or negative, does the use of criminal law have when regulating bioethical conflict? And can the law accommodate moral controversy? By exploring criminal law in theory and in practice and examining the broad field of bioethics as opposed to the narrower terrain of medical ethics, it offers balanced arguments that will help readers form reasoned views on the ethical legitimacy of the invocation and use of criminal law to regulate medical and scientific practice and bioethical issues.

1. Introduction – when criminal law encounters bioethics: a case of tensions and incompatibilities or an apt forum for resolving ethical conflict? Amel Alghrani, Rebecca Bennett and Suzanne Ost
Part I. Death, Dying, and the Criminal Law: 2. Euthanasia and assisted suicide should, when properly performed by a doctor in an appropriate case, be decriminalised John Griffiths
3. Five flawed arguments for decriminalising euthanasia John Keown
4. Euthanasia excused: between prohibition and permission Richard Huxtable
Part II. Freedom and Autonomy: When Consent Is Not Enough: 5. Body integrity identity disorder – a problem of perception? Robert Smith
6. Risky sex and 'manly diversions': the contours of consent in criminal law – transmission and rough horseplay cases David Gurnham
7. 'Consensual' sexual activity between doctors and patients: a matter for the criminal law? Suzanne Ost and Hazel Biggs
Part III. Criminalising Biomedical Science: 8. 'Scientists in the dock': regulating science Amel Alghrani and Sarah Chan
9. Bioethical conflict and developing biotechnologies: is protecting individual and public health from the risks of xenotransplantation a matter for the (criminal) law? Sara Fovargue
10. The criminal law and enhancement – none of the law's business? Nishat Hyder and John Harris
11. Dignity as a socially constructed value Stephen Smith
Part IV. Bioethics and Criminal Law in the Dock: 12. Can English law accommodate moral controversy in medicine? The case of abortion Margaret Brazier
13. The case for decriminalising abortion in Northern Ireland Marie Fox
14. The impact of the loss of deference towards the medical profession José Miola
15. Criminalising medical negligence David Archard
16. All to the good? Criminality, politics, and public health John Coggon
17. Moral controversy, human rights and the common law judge Brenda Hale.

Subject Areas: Medical ethics & professional conduct [MBDC], Medical & healthcare law [LNTM], Criminal law & procedure [LNF], Crime & criminology [JKV]