Treat me right: essays in medical law and ethics

Emerging problems of medicine, technology, and the law; what is a medical decision?; the legal and ethical implications of postcoital birth control; a husband, a wife and an abortion; the doctor, the pill and the 15-year-old girl; the moral status of the embryo; ethics in clinical decision making - the care of the very-low-birth-weight baby; ""R"". v. ""Arthur Reb"" and the severely disabled new-born baby; the patient on the Clapham omnibus; the law and ethics of informed consent and randomized controlled trials; further thoughts on liability for non-observance of the Provisions of the Human Tissue Act 1961; the donation and transplantation of kidneys - should the law be changed?; transsexualism and single-sex marriage; the technological imperative and its application in health care; the check-out - a humane death?; the law relating to the treatment of the terminally ill; the legal effect of requests by the terminally ill and aged not to receive further treatment from doctors; switching off life-support machines - the legal implications.

Paperback

This book brings together a wide cross-section of the author's work in the field of medical law and ethics. Many of the articles have appeared previously in journals, but all are updated. Some are published here for the first time. Professor Kennedy, a former Reith Lecturer and a well-known scholar and broadcaster, writes not only authoritatively and informatively about the subject, but often in a way that is provocative, controversial, and amusing. It is a collection that willinterest the lawyer with medico-legal interests, and the doctor who wants to know more about the rights, duties, and liabilities of his profession, the student of law or medicine, and the layperson who follows developments in this scientifically complex and morally contentious area of law.