Issues in Medical Law and Ethics

Derek Morgan is Reader in Health Care Law and Jurisprudence, Cardiff Law School. He is a Member of the British Medical Association's Medical Ethics Committee.

• 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;