Technology, Health, and Law in Life and Death: Before the Cradle to Beyond the Grave

This book brings together leading global scholars to examine the legal, ethical and social implications of biotechnological innovations in healthcare throughout the lifecycle - from the potential of life being formed outside the womb to the possibility of life after death.

Biotechnological innovations in healthcare have extended the life span of human beings in the 21st century. Emerging health technologies have resulted in human beings living longer, and improving the quality of their lives and their deaths. What were once considered matters of science fiction have now become a reality in a burgeoning field of boundary-pushing advancements. However, emerging health technologies require careful regulation and ethical scrutiny. There must be a balance between what can be done and what should be done in technology, health and law.

This book uniquely takes the reader on a journey of the life cycle - from before the cradle to beyond the grave - of biotechnological innovations to better understand what healthcare of the present and future might hold. It examines how emerging health technologies are profoundly disrupting legal knowledge of life and death in the developed world.

The book makes a significant and original contribution to the field of health law and bioethics by adopting a socio-legal perspective in examining the legal, ethical and social implications of technologies that create, sustain and foster life and death.

Neera Bhatia is Associate Professor at the School of Law, Deakin University, Australia.