Health law

Health Care Law: Bioethics and the Public(s)' Interest(s) - Professor Jonathan Montgomery - lecture

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• published: 18 Mar 2015
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Medical Humanities Sheffield lecture series 11 February 2015 – Jonathan Montgomery, Professor of Health Care Law, University College London and Chair of Nuffield Council on Bioethics Bioethics is a lively field for private and academic debate but it is also an area where public policy decisions need to be made. This lecture explores what it means to explore bioethical issues on behalf of the public. What makes a bioethical issue a matter of public as well as private concern? What is the connection between the views of the public and the public interest? Does public deliberation on bioethical issues have distinctive characteristics that mark it out from personal engagement with these matters? ‘Ethics Committees’ of various sorts have sprung up to engage with bioethics and are commended by the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, but how should we decide whether they are operating in the public interest? What constitutes a healthy public discourse around bioethics and what are its most common pathologies? Jonathan Montgomery addresses these issues, reflecting on his experience of serving on a wide range of bodies engaged with public bioethics, including the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which plays the role of a national ethics committee for the UK. Biography Jonathan Montgomery is Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (the nearest the UK has to a national bioethics committee), and of the Health Research Authority (which protects and promotes the interests of participants, patients and the public in health research and aims to streamline its regulation). He is also a member of the panel of advisers to the Morecambe Bay Investigation, due to report later in 2015. Previous national chair roles include the Advisory Committee on Clinical Excellence Awards (2005-14) and the Human Genetics Commission (2009-12). He served on local NHS boards in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight for over twenty years up to March 2013 (fifteen as a chairman). He chaired the UK Clinical Research Collaboration Working Party on a Strategy for Brain Tissue Banking, was a member of the Committee on the Ethical Aspects of Pandemic Influenza and the Organ Donation Taskforce (for its work on presumed consent in 2008). He has contributed to a wide range of professional guidelines and was a member of the Medical Ethics Committee of the British Medical Association from 2003 to 2008. He is Professor of Health Care Law at the University College London (UCL). His recent publications include… ‘Public ethics and faith’ (2014) Theology, 117 (5), 342-348. doi:10.1177/0040571X14537031 ‘Reflections on the Nature of Public Ethics’ (2013) 22 Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 9-21 ‘Hidden law-making in the province of medical jurisprudence’ (2014) 77(3) Modern Law Review 343-378 (with C Jones and H Biggs). He was consulting editor for Volume 30(1) Medical Professions of Halsbury’s Laws of England (5th ed 2011) and has been one of the General Editors of the Butterworths Family Law Service since 1996. You can follow Jonathan on twitter @prof_JonMont For more information on Medical Humanities Sheffield visit http://mhs.group.shef.ac.uk/