Readings in Comparative Health Law and Bioethics

Book excerpt: This book presents balanced coverage of the four major areas of concern of health law -- health care organization and finance, the obligations of health care professionals and institutions to patients, bioethics, and public health law. For each of these topics, it presents a carefully edited collection of cases, statutes, and readings. While the book contains many sources from English-speaking, common-law jurisdictions, it also includes a wealth of sources from continental Europe and Japan, as well as from developing countries. Several sources have been translated specifically for this book. Whenever possible, the readings are by authors from the countries whose laws are discussed in the reading. Also, most sources are truly comparative; that is, they analyze the laws of not just one, but of several jurisdictions.While this book is intended in part to inform health policy, it is not just another book about comparative health policy. Rather, it focuses uniquely on comparative health law -- how law, legal systems, and legal institutions influence health care recipients, professionals, institutions, and systems. Thus, for example, this book is not so much concerned with how various health care systems ration care as it is with the role of the courts or of administrative agencies in health care rationing.This is the first book to offer a text for teaching courses in comparative health law and bioethics in American law, public health, medical or nursing schools. It is also ideally suited for the comparative emphasis of summer courses abroad or for anyone interested in comparative health law.