Law and the medical-man: The challenges of an expanding interface

Abstract

In the 1960s, medicine was a highly personalized profession, reflecting a candid relationship between physician and patient, based on fiduciarism. The institutionalization of healthcare, with growing governmental control and the urge towards resource optimization, has widened the rift between individual and community perspectives. In such a pluralistic milieu, adequate understanding of law is necessary in order to harmonize legitimate interests of diverse parties, within the parameters of moral concepts and socioeconomic constraints. The interface of medicine and law has been expanding rapidly, embracing in its fold, newer areas, and all those involved in healthcare ought to keep themselves posted with the ongoing legal trends, including legislative enactments and judicial decisions. With the advancement of medicine and biotechnology, several areas which were earlier not known, or if known were of theoretical interest, have assumed great practical importance. Specific legislative strategies, in some of these areas are yet to crystallize, and the healthcare providers are therefore guided by the sense of human values, professional ethics, socioeconomic imperatives, judicial pronouncements, and the interests of their own establishments. Specific areas covered by this chapter include organ transplantation, end-of-life decisions, clinical trials involving human subjects, assisted reproduction, and the status of the embryo and the fetus. The chapter offers a broad overview of the emerging areas requiring the physician to update his legal knowledge and perceptivity in order to discharge his/her professional obligations effectively within the local legal impositions and the socio-economic, political and cultural milieu which may differ in different jurisdictions.