Danielle Griffiths

Healthcare scandals in the NHS: crime and punishment

The Francis Report into failures of care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Hospital documented a series of ‘shocking’ systematic failings in healthcare that left patients routinely neglected, humiliated and in pain as the Trust focused on cutting costs and hitting government targets. At present, the criminal law in England plays a limited role in calling healthcare professionals to account for failures in care. Normally, only if a gross error leads to death will a doctor or nurse face the prospect of prosecution. Doctors and nurses caring for patients under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005 may however be prosecuted for wilful neglect of a patient. In the light of the Francis Report, this article considers whether the criminal offence of wilful neglect should be extended to a broader healthcare setting and not confined to mental healthcare.

The (Re) Production of the Genetically Related Body in Law, Technology and Culture: Mitochondria Replacement Therapy

Advances in medicine in the latter half of the twentieth century have dramatically altered human bodies, expanding choices around what we do with them and how they connect to other bodies. Nowhere is this more so than in the area of reproductive technologies (RTs). Reproductive medicine and the laws surrounding it in the UK have reconfigured traditional boundaries surrounding parenthood and the family. Yet culture and regulation surrounding RTs have combined to try to ensure that while traditional boundaries may be pushed, they are reconstructed in similar ways. This paper looks at the most recent RT to be permitted in the UK, mitochondria (mtDNA) replacement therapy (MRT). Despite controversial media headlines surrounding the technique, MRT is in fact an example of how science and regulation seek to expand models of traditional relatedness in a way that doesn’t challenge the existing order. Yet, like other RTs, while attempts are made to ensure it doesn’t push traditional boundaries too far, fissures and inconsistencies appear in law and culture, which give interesting insights into how genetics, parentage and identity are being mediated in new but familiar ways.

The road to the dock: prosecution decision-making in medical manslaughter cases

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Translational bodies: exploring the socio-legal contours of human bodies past present and future

Historically, the human body has been the point of departure for understanding ourselves, and our relationship to nature and the wider universe. It has been the subject of traditions and taboos, art and science, and of medical research. Increasingly, the human body and its parts have been the focus of technological advances in medicine and science that challenge popular ideas of what is natural or conventionally acceptable, what can or should be subject to medical or legal intervention. Such translational bodies do not always follow a linear path; the expectations of some technological advances have often had unexpected repercussions. Against the background of such developments, the study of the human body has emerged as an exciting and multidisciplinary area of research within the broader field of socio-legal studies in health. Taking the human body as the point of departure, this special issue will draw, and critically reflect upon some of the work undertaken in the fiveyear Wellcome Strategic Programme The Human Body: Its Scope Limits and Future. The Programme has brought together an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars from sociology, law, bioethics and the life sciences. One of the main aims of the Programme has been to pursue research that explores how the human body has interacted with technological developments in medicine and science, not just as end-users of technology but at all stages of development; for example, the use of human biomaterials in medical and scientific technology and new enhancement technologies which may modify the human body and even re-direct evolution. In this regard, the socio-cultural context in which such developments have taken place, as well as the role of law and regulation, have been central to the work undertaken during the course of the Programme. An interdisciplinary conference to mark the end of the Programme, ‘Translational Bodies: Ethical, Legal and Social Issues’, was held in April 2014. Selected papers presented at the conference have now been brought