Health Law

Bioethics is a multidisciplinary field of law and one that can not be ignored. Bioethical and Evolutionary Approaches to Medicine and the Law is a comprehensive, scholarly analysis of bioethics and the development of its standards. The book is broken up into the following four parts: Part I deals with scientific, religious, ethical and legal aspects of bioethics; Part II evaluates 100 current bioethical issues and sets forth specific approaches for their resolution; Part III focuses on medical, legal and other problems from beginning of life (overpopulation, birth control, in vitro fertilization, etc.) through end of life (physician assisted suicide, advance directives, euthanasia, etc.); and Part IV discusses the major bioethical issues in genetics and genetic engineering.

This book provides a concise analysis of areas in which the law has addressed issues in bioethics. Topics include assisted reproductive techniques and family-making, limitations on reproduction (including abortion, contraception and sterilization), the role of ethical and religious beliefs of health care professionals, the definition of death, end-of-life decision-making (including physician assisted death), genetics, research involving human subjects (including issues related to conflicts of interest), stem cell research, organ transplantation, and other emerging topics. The book provides an excellent introduction to the process of ethics decision-making as well as useful support for students.

"Public policy responses to escalating medical costs and constrained access pose fundamental challenges to health care law. Profound medical advances also generate many ethical dilemmas. This authoritative discussion considers how law and ethics respond to these driving social, economic, and political forces of innovation, crisis and reform.

Although a bit out-dated, Health Care Reform examines the moral principles that must underlie any new reform initiative and the processes of democratic decision-making essential to successful reform. The book then provides careful analyses that will allow the reader to short-circuit the myth-making, polemics, and distortions that have too often characterized public discussion of health care reform. Its aim is to provide the moral foundations and institutional arrangements needed to drive any new health care initiative and so to stimulate a reasoned discussion before the next inevitable round of reform efforts.

The book covers topics such as: human rights and medical law; the allocation of resources and distributive justice; ethical relativism; science and religion; and public health emergencies. Taken as a whole, this book examines the extent to which law, medicine, economics, and bioethics interact as synergistic vectors of force in shaping and setting both personal and public responses to the complexities of biotechnology. Law and Bioethics: Intersections along the Mortal Coil casts law as the pivotal force in bringing stability to the ongoing debates on how to maintain bioethical relevance in decision making and in so doing, it offers an excellent overview of the current bioethical issues in medical law considered in light of recent and ongoing technological developments in medicine.

Medical law and ethics are frequently referred to in conjunction, and appear together in many textbooks. But do they combine to form a cohesive unit, and do they benefit each other? It may be argued that they do not, but rather suffer a symbiotic relationship, clashing rather than cooperating. This book examines this relationship, and how the law sees medical ethics. It then considers whether medical ethics functions in the way that the law thinks that it does. After providing a historical perspective that identifies medical ethics discourse as disjointed and fragmented, the book continues by examining key medico-legal case law and reports that have an inherent ethical content for clues as to how they define medical ethics and its role. It also considers how medical ethics sees the law, concluding that a misapprehension by each party as to what the other does creates a mutually harmful relationship between them.

Readings in Comparative Health Law and Bioethics presents balanced comparative coverage of the four major areas of health law: health care organization and finance, the obligations of health care professionals and institutions to patients, bioethics, and public health law. For each of these topics, it presents a carefully edited collection of cases, statutes, and readings. While the book contains many sources from English-speaking, common-law jurisdictions, it also includes a wealth of sources from continental Europe and Japan, as well as from developing countries. Several sources have been translated specifically for this book. Whenever possible, the readings are by authors from the countries whose laws are discussed in the reading. Also, most readings are truly comparative; that is, they analyze the laws of not just one, but of several jurisdictions. Jost focuses on comparative health law -- how law, legal systems, and legal institutions influence health care recipients, professionals, institutions, and systems. Thus, for example, this book is not so much concerned with how various health care systems ration care as it is with the role of the courts or of administrative agencies in health care rationing.

This book explores the scope, application and role of medical law, regulatory norms and ethics, and addresses key challenges introduced by contemporary advances in biomedical research and healthcare. While mindful of national developments, the handbook supports a global perspective in its approach to medical law. Contributors include leading scholars in both medical law and ethics, who have developed specially commissioned pieces in order to present a critical overview and analysis of the current state of medical law and ethics. Each chapter offers comprehensive coverage of longstanding and traditional topics in medical law and ethics, and provides dynamic insights into contemporary and emerging issues in this heavily debated field. Topics covered include: Bioethics, health and human rights, Medical liability, Law and emerging health technologies, Public health law, Personalized medicine, The law and ethics of access to medicines in developing countries, Medical research in the genome era, and Emerging legal and ethical issues in reproductive technologies.

Transparency is a concept that is becoming increasingly lauded as a solution to a host of problems in the American health care system. Transparency initiatives show great promise, including empowering patients and other stakeholders to make more efficient decisions, improve resource allocation, and better regulate the health care industry. Nevertheless, transparency is not a cure-all for the problems facing the modern health care system. The authors of this volume present a nuanced view of transparency, exploring ways in which transparency has succeeded and ways in which transparency initiatives have room for improvement.

Few deny the impact on physicians, patients, and patients' families of US Supreme Court decisions. Actions the Court takes, or refuses to take, carry implications for how patients receive care, the type of care they receive, how medical care will be paid for, the extent to which patients can trust their doctors, and even how patients die. Below the surface of constitutional interpretation and judicial temperament lie ethical commitments and value considerations. Justices do not decide cases, especially biomedical ethics cases, in a vacuum. Too much is at stake for those involved in health care--receiving services, providing care, or studying its moral constraints--to ignore the explicit and implicit ethical considerations of the Justices. The book examines the rulings and the individual opinions of justices on important biomedical issues including: Contraception, Confidentiality, Abortion, Reproductive Freedom, Assisted Suicide, Mental Illness, Religious Objection to Treatment, Medical Regulation, and Health Care Rights.

In this book, Schaller provides a thorough examination of the impact of biotechnology and biomedical advances on the everyday lives of people in modern society. Individuals and institutions are increasingly faced with a growing number of critical personal and ethical decisions that present themselves at all stages of life, from birth to death. These issues include the physician-patient relationship, informed consent, confidentiality and privacy, reproductive choices, end-of-life choices, health care, drug choices, and the allocation of scarce resources such as human organs, sperm, and eggs. In the absence of policies, we turn increasingly to the courts to resolve these issues. Schaller illuminates the role of the law in bioethics controversies.