The Medical Law and Ethics programme is designed for students who really want to develop
their expertise in legal and ethical issues in the field of medicine, and life
sciences more broadly. So that means that this can appeal to both students
who have already studied law, who really want to develop their legal expertise in
this area, but also students who come from the life sciences, or medical, or
dentistry background, who in the course of their day-to-day practice find that
they confront legal and ethical issues and really want to develop a deeper understanding of that.
We call our programme the Medical Law and Ethics programme, we
take that second part very seriously. So it's not just a grounding in medical law,
and the laws related to life sciences and research more broadly, but indeed the
kind of bioethical issues that arise in these topics. So we have fundamental
training in bioethics and ethical concepts, which I really think sets us apart.
Not only do we look at topics - classic topics in medical law - as I say end-of-life,
reproductive issues, consent to treatment and so on, but in fact our core strengths
really are in looking at aspects of health research, so things like law and
genetics, regulation of healthcare professionals,
particularly those that are engaged in research topics like data protection
related to health research, so really these I think are our core strengths.
The Medical Law and Ethics programme has a range of scholars who focus on different
aspects of medical law and ethics. My own strengths lie primarily in health
research regulation, and within that I look at, traditionally, data protection
issues, so both the new EU general data protection regulation and the UK's kind
of instantiation of that the general data protection act,
sorry, data protection act 2018, as it relates to health research.
Other aspects to look at our research ethics committees, particularly within the NHS,
so I've conducted empirical research regarding NHS recs and how they go about
doing their work, and related to that is just a general interest in empirical
legal research as relates to health research regulation broadly.
Hi, I'm Annie Sorbie, I'm a lecturer in medical law and ethics at the University of Edinburgh.
I come from a professional background, so I was a practising lawyer in Health and
Social Care for many years before taking up my current position.
I lead our courses for the fundamental issues in medical jurisprudence, which is one of
our foundational courses, and I also lead our course the governance of innovative
medicine. So in both of those courses I bring to bear my professional experience,
in terms of how the courts work and how cases are considered, but I also -
my research is mainly around sharing health data in health research, and also around
the role of the public interest, and they're all topics you'll see cropping up in our classes.
My name is Gerard Porter, and I'm a lecturer in medical law
and ethics at Edinburgh Law School. I teach a range of subjects in the medical
law and ethics area, and I also teach patent law.
Well I'm very interested in a number of different areas, but particularly in terms of medical
negligence, I'm interested in studying the whole process of litigation,
how it unfolds, and through my teaching I take the students step by
step through the kind of, the structure and the building blocks of building a
case, and defending a case, and arguing different points. And in terms of patent
law, I'm really interested in the issues facing companies in developing new life
science products, and also in the public interest aspects of perhaps
giving companies too much power, or too much control over products that are
needed to be disseminated widely through society, so looking at some of those
policy tensions as well as the legal aspects.
I'm Emily Poston, I'm an early
career fellow in bioethics, which means effectively I'm a bioethicist.
I'm interested in the ethical issues raised by medicine, by healthcare, by research
and so forth. My research interests are quite broad, they're about conceptual
issues in bioethics like autonomy and identity, but also really applied stuff
like reproductive ethics, and neuro ethics, and that comes through in some of
the more social and biotechnological courses that I teach on.
But one of the courses that I'm an organiser and a lead tutor on, is the fundamentals in
bioethics course, which is a really great grounding in ethics that sits alongside
the really firm grounding in law that you'll get from your other courses on
this degree. And it's not just about the kind of technical, moral, philosophy of
ethics, but really about critical thinking, about analytical skills,
and those are woven through, and useful to, all the courses on the programme.