Medicine, Patients and the Lawis a leading book in its field, aimed at practitioners and students of both law and medicine, as well as the general reader. It examines the regulation of medical practice, the rights and duties of patients and their medical advisers, the provision of compensation for medical mishaps and the framework of rules governing those delicate issues of life and death where medicine, morals and the law overlap. The fourth edition of this highly acclaimed book is fully updated to cover recent changes in law and medical practice. Among other current issues, it addresses the radical reforms proposed by the Shipman Inquiry, the impact of change within the NHS, the Mental Capacity Act of 2005 and includes a new chapter on access to health care. Clear explanations of legal issues make this book accessible and absorbing.

"Doctors have been concerned with ethics since the earliest days of medical practice. Traditionally, medical practitioners have been expected to be motivated by a desire to help their patients. Ethical codes and systems, such as the Hippocratic Oath, have emphasised this. During the latter half of the 20th century, advances in medical science, in conjunction with social and political changes, meant that the accepted conventions of the doctor/patient relationship were increasingly being questioned. After the Nuremberg Trials, in which the crimes of Nazi doctors, among others, were exposed, it became clear that doctors cannot be assumed to be good simply by virtue of their profession. Not only this, but doctors who transgress moral boundaries can harm people in the most appalling ways"--

Medical Law and Ethics is a feature-rich introduction to medical law and ethics, discussing key principles, cases, and statutes. It provides examination of a range of perspectives on the topic, such as feminist, religious, and sociological, enabling readers to not only understand the law but also the tensions between different ethical notions.

Essential, required reading for doctors and patients alike: A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of the world’s premiere cancer researchers reveals an urgent philosophy on the little-known principles that govern medicine—and how understanding these principles can empower us all. Over a decade ago, when Siddhartha Mukherjee was a young, exhausted, and isolated medical resident, he discovered a book that would forever change the way he understood the medical profession. The book, The Youngest Science, forced Dr. Mukherjee to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question: Is medicine a “science”? Sciences must have laws—statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. But does medicine have laws like other sciences? Dr. Mukherjee has spent his career pondering this question—a question that would ultimately produce some of most serious thinking he would do around the tenets of his discipline—culminating in The Laws of Medicine. In this important treatise, he investigates the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine. Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this important book is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and Eureka! moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee’s signature eloquence and passionate prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical read, not just for those in the medical profession, but for everyone who is moved to better understand how their health and well-being is being treated. Ultimately, this book lays the groundwork for a new way of understanding medicine, now and into the future.

This text analyses a variety of issues concerning medicine and the application of law governing its practice, education, and research. The author addresses them in the light of recent developments in technology and views them from a comparative perspective by focusing on Indian case law and jurisdictions from other countries.

A collection of essays on the social history of legal medicine including case studies on infanticide, abortion, coroners' inquests and criminal insanity.

After the American Revolution, the new republic's most prominent physicians envisioned a society in which doctors, lawyers, and the state might work together to ensure public well-being and a high standard of justice. But as James C. Mohr reveals in Doctors and the Law, what appeared to be fertile ground for cooperative civic service soon became a battlefield, as the relationship between doctors and the legal system became increasingly adversarial. Mohr provides a graceful and lucid account of this prfound shift from civic republicanism to marketplace professionalism. He shows how, by 1900, doctors and lawyers were at each other's throats, medical jurisprudence had disappeared as a serious field of study for American physicians, the subject of insanity had become a legal nightmare, expert medical witnesses had become costly and often counterproductive, and an ever-increasing number of malpractice suits had intensified physicians' aversion to the courts. In short, the system we have taken largely for granted throughout the twentieth century had been established. Doctors and the Law is a penetrating look at the origins of our inherited medico-legal system.