The Changing Legal and Conceptual Shape of Health Care Privacy

Abstract

The contributions of Professor Bernard Dickens to health law and bioethics span the era in which these fields have emerged as distinct domains of teaching, scholarship and professional and public conversation. Neither field exists in a vacuum. The concerns of bioethics, like the content of health law, are a product of social forces. The bureaucratization of medical care, the possibilities and uncertainties created by developments in medical technology, not to mention glaring health inequalities, have been destabilizing forces in medicine. Writing in 1974, American sociologist Renée Fox noted that medicine had reached “a stage of development characterized by diffuse ethical and existential self-consciousness.” This new medical introspection was evidenced by intense engagement with issues of biomedical regulation, and with the growth of professional codes and processes for resolving value-laden issues within clinical settings.While sometimes described as a process or site for discussion and “engagement,” bioethics evolved rapidly into a domain of governance, with direct implications for clinical practice.