Bioethics, Medicine and the Criminal Law The Criminal Law and Bioethical Conflict: Walking the Tightrope

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.

• Provides interesting insights into controversial and timely issues in law, medicine and bioethics in a clear and concise way

• Essays by eminent authors offer varied and contextualised analysis of the criminal law's regulation of bioethical issues

• Focuses on health care, scientific research and biotechnologies - matters of growing contemporary significance that the reader will not find covered elsewhere