Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2021
This conference comes together at a critical time for law, ethics, and medicine. The issues which come under attention are of the greatest variety, complexity, sensitivity, and urgency.
The topics span the whole of human life. They begin at a point before human life has commenced. The revolutionary developments of biology as they affect conception and the use and limits of reproductive and genetic techniques arrest our thoughts in section VI of this special issue of Law, Medicine & Health Care. The rationing of health care as it is made available to patients and the community is the focus of attention in section III. The subject of medical malpractice and the litigation which attends it where the patient or the family claim that things have gone wrong are considered in section II.
The new challenge of AIDS is discussed with its many faceted problems: medical, legal, and ethical. It is difficult now to remember the world before AIDS.