Medicine and law
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The UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (hereafter the HFEA) is a regulatory body facing growing pressures and difficulties. Like any regulatory body, it faces the challenge of regulating with sufficient expertise, legitimacy, and contemporaneity. This challenge is, however, exacerbated by the fact that it seeks to regulate some of the most controversial and rapidly changing technologies of our time. ⋯ In addition to the multitude of cases brought against it, the HFEA's actions recently led a House of Commons Select Committee to pointedly declare that "democracy is not served by unelected quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations) taking decisions on behalf of Parliament". While endorsing the general need to review the legislation under which the HFEA operates (the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990), this paper will argue that the HFEA was correct in interpreting its jurisdiction to encompass the technique used to produce Dolly the sheep. This paper thereby defends the key feature of the approach of the House of Lords in the recent case of R (Bruno Quintavalle on behalf of the ProLife Alliance) v Secretary of State for Health [2003] UKHL 13.
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The United States may or may not be facing a "malpractice crisis" which can result in a loss of quality of medical care in certain specialties by virtue of non-performance or the exiting of certain physicians from certain high-risk specialties due to increases in premiums. Various studies have been performed by various governmental agencies on a federal level in the United States. The Department of Legal Medicine, part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, began collecting veteran's affairs medical malpractice claims data and extracting information from the analysis from medical records and associated documents. ⋯ Subsequent to that report, several other reports have been issued including a report on medical malpractice insurance generated by the General Accounting Office in 2003, some ten years later. More recently, a report of medical malpractice having implications on rising premiums on and access to health care generated by the General Accounting Office was released in August of 2003. This paper will demonstrate areas of concern with regard to the area of medical malpractice as well as incidence of medical malpractice and claims upon the insurance industry, medical specialties and the impact upon the community generally in the United States.