Ethics and Law in Health Care and Research

This is the fifth volume of essays in medical ethics and law that the King's College Centre of Medical Law and Ethics has presented to the public.

The papers reflect issues topical at the time they were written in the academic year 1988-89 and attempt to raise questions of enduring interest. New to this series is discussion of the ethics and epistemology of clinical research and the validation of novel therapies. A recurrent theme of these volumes has been the roles played by law, and the courts in particular, in commenting on and shaping medical practice.

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 cover many varied issues in family and medical law, but are linked by a common theme of the problems faced by the law and the courts in shaping and giving execution to public policy in this area. Four themes broached in earlier volumes and treated anew here are: society's response to AIDS, resource allocation, the ethics of killing in medicine, and a mother's responsibilities to and rights over her unborn child.