Department of Health, Review of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act: Proposals for revised legislation (including establishment of the Regulatory Authority for Tissue and Embryos) (Dec 2006), Cm 6989
Legislative restrictions on the sale of organs, gametes and surrogacy services are often seen as having no basis other than mere prejudice or taboo. This paper argues instead that they can be read as instances of a broader decommodification of healthcare provision established in Britain with the creation of the NHS in 1948. Restrictions on the marketisation of medicine were justified by Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, and by Richard Titmuss, one of its chief academic defenders, in distinctly utopian terms. On this vision, the NHS would function as a utopian enclave prefiguring an idealised non-capitalist future. This commonsense of post-war medicine was fatally destabilised by fiscal crisis and social critique in the 1970s. Influential comme
this is more than a study in the jurisprudence of regulation and of technology. The book also contains important and instructive essays in medical law (particularly), seeking, as it does, to explicate many of the background debates (for example on consent (pp 72–86) and information rights (pp 87–98), on the (legitimate and illegitimate) purposive interpretation of key texts such as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 and embryonic stem cell research (pp 47–56, 168–184), property in human tissue (pp 61–68) and genetic databases and forensic collections (pp 215–235), each of which is often treated in a more or less superficial way in some of the standard texts and commentaries, where judicial and legislative statements are offered without background context beyond some preferred ethical standpoint. And there are considerations of bioethics generally (pp 32–47, 100–118), patenting and human life forms (187–195), gambling (197–201), nanotechnology (pp 118–125).
This note analyses Yearworth v North Bristol NHS Trust, in which the Court of Appeal accepted the existence of property interests in parts or products of the human body and considered the applicability of chattel torts where interference with such interests occurs. The writer questions whether the Court's decision to extend the law of bailment in the case was necessary, or whether the law of conversion or negligence should be available as the more appropriate causes of action.
Cash incentives and the payment of funeral expenses are two ideas being put forward to encourage people to donate human organs and tissue. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is asking the public if it is ethical to use financial incentives to increase donations of organs, eggs and sperm. Paying for most types of organs and tissue is illegal in the UK. The public consultation will last 12 weeks and the council's findings will be published in autumn 2011.
We provide our bodies or parts of our bodies for medical research or for the treatment of others in a number of ways and for a variety of reasons. However, there is a shortage of bodily material for many of these purposes in the UK. What should be done about it? The Council has set up a Working Party, chaired by Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, to explore the ethical issues raised by the provision of bodily material for medical treatment and research. Questions to be considered include: * what motivates people to provide bodily material and what inducements or incentives are appropriate? * what constitutes valid consent? * what future ownership or control people should have over donated materials? * are there ethical limits on how we try to meet demand?
Standards should never come into question, but it's clear to this Government that NHS administrative costs can be streamlined. Estimates suggest that savings of over £180 million could be delivered by 2015 by reducing the number of NHS bodies, including arm's-length bodies. And that is why I set out proposals to change responsibility for regulating fertility treatment and human tissue last week. The UK-wide consultation will consider whether the responsibilities of the regulators - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and Human Tissue Authority (HTA) - should move to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the Health Research Authority (HRA).