The Law-Medicine Relation: A Philosophical Exploration

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxx

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2. The Physicians and Researcher’s Mandate from Society: Biomedical, Legal, and Ethical Considerations

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Introductory Comments

      • Patricia King

      Pages 3-4

   3. Clinical Intuition: A Procedure for Balancing the Rights of Patients and the Responsibilities of Physicians

      • Mark Siegler, Ann Dudley Goldblatt

      Pages 5-31

   4. Physicians and Society: Tribulations of Power and Responsibility

      • John Ladd

      Pages 33-52

   5. Clinical Investigations in Developing Countries: Legal and Regulatory Issues in the Promotion of Research and the Protection of Human Rights

      • William J. Curran

      Pages 53-74

   6. Federal Regulation of Medicine and Biomedical Research: Power, Authority, and Legitimacy

      • Robert M. Veatch

      Pages 75-91

3. Causation and Responsibility: Science, Medicine and the Law

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 93-93

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   2. Causation and Responsibility: Medicine, Science and the Law

      • Kenneth F. Schaffner

      Pages 95-122

   3. Relevant Causes: Their Designation in Medicine and Law

      • H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr.

      Pages 123-127

   4. Time, Law and Responsibility: Additional Thoughts on Causality

      • Thomas Halper

      Pages 129-136

4. The Psychiatrist’s Dilemma: Duty to Patient or Duty to Society?

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 137-137

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   2. Psychotherapeutic Discretion and Judicial Decision: A Case of Enigmatic Justice

      • William J. Winslade

      Pages 139-157

   3. The Morality of Involuntary Hospitalization

      • Charles M. Culver, Bernard Gert

      Pages 159-175

   4. Duty to the Patient or Society: Reflections on the Psychiatrist’s Dilemma

      • Michael A. Peszke

      Pages 177-186

5. Decision Making at the Beginning of Life: Medicine, Ethics and the Law

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 187-187

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   2. The Bearing of Prognosis on the Ethics of Medicine: Congenital Anomalies, the Social Context and the Law

      • Stuart F. Spicker, John R. Raye

      Pages 189-216

   3. Substantive Criteria and Procedures in Withholding Care from Defective Newborns

      • John A. Robertson

      Pages 217-224

   4. Is Existence Ever an Injury?: The Wrongful Life Cases

      • Angela R. Holder

      Pages 225-239

   5. Wrongful Life: A Reply to Angela Holder

      • Peter C. Williams

      Pages 241-252

This volume is a contribution to the continuing interaction between law and medicine. Problems arising from this interaction have been addressed, in part, by previous volumes in this series. In fact, one such problem constitutes the central focus of Volume 5, Mental Illness: Law and Public Policy [1]. The present volume joins other volumes in this series in offering an exploration and critical analysis of concepts and values underlying health care. In this volume, however, we look as well at some of the general questions occasioned by the law's relation with medicine. We do so out of a conviction that medi­ cine and the law must be understood as the human creations they are, reflect­ ing important, wide-ranging, but often unaddressed aspects of the nature of the human condition. It is only by such philosophical analysis of the nature of the conceptual foundations of the health care professions and of the legal profession that we will be able to judge whether these professions do indeed serve our best interests. Such philosophical explorations are required for the public policy decisions that will be pressed upon us through the increasing complexity of health care and of the law's response to new and changing circumstances. As a consequence, this volume attends as much to issues in public policy as in the law. The law is, after all, the creature of human deci­ sions concerning prudent public policy and basic human rights and goods.

• Ethics of medicine
• ethics
• health
• human rights
• morality

• School of Medicine, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, USA

  Stuart F. Spicker, Joseph M. Healey

• Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, USA

  H. Tristram Engelhardt

Policies and ethics