Description
The Human Rights Act 1998 is a UK law that protects human rights. The Act includes rights to healthcare, which means that people have the right to receive treatment in a safe and humane way. The Act also protects people's rights to privacy, dignity, and autonomy.
The passing of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine put the icing on a good decade for the development of healthcare rights. With the implementation of the Act in October 2000 English law has for the first time a full positive system of legal rights. The Act will require judges to interpret all law, except express legislative provision, in so far as possible, in a manner consistent with the rights laid down in it (these being drawn from the European Convention on Human Rights. Express legislative provision can be declared incompatible with the Act. The difficulty is not so much that the Act will change healthcare law but the uncertainty of how it will do so. This book provides an insight into the operation of the Act and the Convention both in general terms and in respect to key areas including: Use of healthcare resources and the right to treatment; procedure, professional discipline and complaints; the issue of autonomy and its relationship with dignity under both the Act and the Convention; rights in relation to minors, vulnerable adults and mental health; access to medical records and confidentiality; issues at the beginning of life and its ending; and finally transplantation and biotechnology.
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