The Historical Development of Health Care Law and Bioethics in England and Wales: A Symbiotic Relationship?
Med Law, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 22-396, April 2014
83 Pages Posted: 29 Jun 2014 Last revised: 2 Jul 2014
Date Written: April 10, 2014
Abstract
The paper explores the backward and forward linkage between HCL and bioethics. Indeed, the relationship between the two is so close that it can be considered one of symbiosis. This is particularly the case when an account is taken of how HCL and bioethics positively benefited from each other in diverse ways during their development into their present status as discrete disciplines. In the first place, the aftermath of the Second World War, such as the Nuremberg trial and unprecedented medical experiment scandals in the 1960s/70s fueled the increasing participation of lay scholars in exploring and critiquing medical ethics which culminated in the emergence of bioethics.2 This in turn facilitated the evolution of HCL as a discipline, since academic lawyers involved in early bioethical discourse developed interest in exploring the interface between law and bioethics at the same time that society was waking up to the ethical implications of medical advances. As HCL emerged as a discrete discipline, it consolidated the status of bioethics as a field of inquiry by projecting the relevance of the latter in adjudication of novel cases with significant slippery moral undertones. Thus, the chicken and egg paradox finds a perfect reflection in the emergence of health care law and bioethics in England and Wales.
Keywords: Medical Law, Health Care Law, Bioethics, historical development of medical law, autonomy, medical advances
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