Should medical ethics be medical law?

This seminar was originally scheduled for an earlier date, but will be held on the 19th of May.

The boundaries between medical ethics, medical morality and medical law are porous. The statements by authoritative bodies such as the GMC as to what constitutes acceptable medical behaviour are often, via the Bolam test, regarded by the courts as definitive of legally acceptable medical practice. Those statements, too, sometimes protect clinicians' own moral choices - and the law thus ends up endorsing personal morality too. Yet sometimes the flow is the other way: statements by judges influence what is regarded by individuals and regulators as moral or ethical. I give an account of the relationships between law, ethics and morality in a medical law context, and argue that the law has too often abdicated its responsibility.