Globalisation and Health : Challenges for Health Law and Bioethics

This timely collection explores ethical and legal dilemmas in healthcare arising from globalization. Conflicts between public interests and individual rights, the challenge of regulating professionals and access to health services, and the effects of a global market all feature prominently in contemporary debates in this area. As a result of globalization, issues in health law and bioethics can no longer be understood solely within political boundaries that define traditional notions of individuals and communities. Rather, solutions for emerging problems require a global conception of rights and obligations, including the re-evaluation of ethical frameworks and legal regimes that currently govern exchanges in healthcare. Leading scholars in bioethics, law, medicine and philosophy from various jurisdictions engage these themes in this volume, and demonstrate the need for transnational solutions in a global age of healthcare.

Health, Rights and Globalisation

Draws together essays from leading scholars on the challenges that arise for health, law, policy and ethics at the intersections of health, rights and globalization. This book addresses global issues in public health, globalization and bioethics, and globalization and biotechnology.

Introduction

This volume draws together essays from leading scholars on the challenges that arise for health, law, policy and ethics at the intersections of health, rights and globalization. The papers in this volume address global issues in public health, globalization and bioethics, and globalization and biotechnology. This volume will be invaluable to all those interested in global issues in health.

Freedom to choose? Embryo selection, reproductive decision-making and the role of the state

Involving the biopsy of an eight-cell embryo, PGD has been hailed as a means of making reproductive decisions without having to face the heart-wrenching decision to abort an affected foetus. However, controversy around the kinds of traits for which testing can be done, and who has access to the technology, has led to questions about the way in which the technology is developing. Women who are allowed to access in vitro fertilisation (IVF) services can currently also access PGD in limited circumstances.

Introduction - research ethics : women, sex, and gender in biomedical research

The ethical governance of biomedical research is an area of intense international debate. Scholars argue about who should regulate and how, the appropriate role for ethics committees, what kind of research should be included, and who should be involved in monitoring compliance. A particular aspect of these debates concerns the inclusion of women as research participants and the efforts to ensure that researchers consistently investigate questions of sex and gender in health research. There is increasing evidence of the role of sex in the manifestation and course of some illnesses and their treatment. Moreover, evidence suggests that gendered expectations also affect health outcomes. This special issue investigates how researchers are addressing these issues and debates the appropriate roles of policy makers, ethicists, and lawyers in ensuring that sex and gender differences are taken into account in the development, conduct, and reporting of health research.

Written in code : diversity and the new genetics

Modern genetic research holds out the promise of a bold new future in which humanity has identified and conquered the genetic roots of many diseases. Genetic science also promises to shed light on who we are, what it is that makes us tick, what it is that makes us the way we are — in short, what it is that makes us human. Yet while genetics are a potential saviour (saving us from disease), it also appears as a threat that at the extremes appears to be the stuff of our worst nightmares, such as the prospect, probably more imagined than real, of rows of cloned individuals. The new genetics hold out the promise that through genetics we will be able to determine what we are, a promise that is simultaneously appealing and terrifying. This chapter discusses the cloning of people and parts, the law’s response to cloning, genetics and diversity, a framework for law reform.

The human embryo as property? Cryopreservation and the challenges for law

The development of the new reproductive technologies has presented significant challenges for policy makers and law reformers. This article focuses on the particular challenges posed by cryopreservation of embryos. These issues are analysed through discussion of relevant Australian statutory provisions and United States case law. The article concludes with a consideration of whether the property model provides an appropriate framework for reproductive material.

Review: "Controversies in Health Law" by In Freckelton and Kerry Peterson

During the past couple of decades health law has been transformed. Within that period we have been confronted with advances in medical science, particularly in genetics, reproductive technology and life-sustaining treatments. Health care has become more expensive, more consumer oriented and more litigious. In addition, the ethical implications of these developments, and the role for law, both as a regulator of health care and in its responses to emerging challenges, have occupied policy-makers, law reformers, health professionals, ethicists and the broader community in Australia and overseas. While many issues have emerged from these developments, there have been few easy solutions...

Reproductive technology, public policy and single motherhood

In mid 2000, the Australian community engaged in a national debate over access to infertility treatment services. The debate was sparked by a Federal Court decision in late July. That decision, by Justice Sundberg in the case of McBain v State of Victoria 1 held that the provisions of the Infertility Treatment Act 1995 (Vic) which limited eligibility for infertility treatment to women who were married or in heterosexual de facto relationships, were inconsistent with section 22 of the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) which prohibits discrimination on the basis of marital status. Justice Sundberg held that, by virtue of section 109 of the Constitution, 2 the provisions of the Victorian Act were inoperative to the extent of the inconsistency between the State and Commonwealth legislation.

Guest editorial : the body and the law

This issue of the Journal of Law and Medicine seeks to explore the law's relationship with the human body within a broad context of social, cultural and technological considerations. It does this both in terms of the ways in which the law constitutes the body (for example, by labelling it as property or otherwise), and in terms of the legal rules which regulate rights to bodies and body parts.

Genetic technologies and the regulation of reproductive decision-making in Australia

This article provides a critical analysis of the current Australian regulatory landscape at the interface between genetics and reproductive decision- making. The authors argue that a comparative analysis with other countries and international law and a contextual examination of the way law regulates concepts such as disease and health, abnormality and normality is necessary before we can develop appropriate policy and legislative responses in this area. Specific genetic testing technologies are considered including prenatal genetic testing, preimplantation genetic diagnosis and inheritable genetic modification. An increasing number of members of the Australian community are using genetic testing technologies when they decide to have a baby. The authors argue that as concepts of disease and health vary among members of the community and the potential to test for traits other than illness increases, a new tension arises between an ethic of individual choice and a role for government in regulating reproductive decision-making.