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1. Medical Technology and New Frontiers of Family Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

M.D. Kirby
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Extract

In Mount Isa Mines Limited v. Pusey, Windeyer, justice of the High Court of Australia, wrote of “[l]aw, marching with medicine but in the rear and limping a little.“ This remark, characterizing the stumbling approach of the law in providing damages for nervous shock occasioned by negligence, may be too kind when applied to the response of family law to the remarkable advances of knowledge and technology affecting human sexuality and conception.

Nowadays, there is a growing sense of urgency and impatience about the response of the law to medical developments. One writer trained both in law and medicine observed from his informed standpoint:

Those doctors who have studied law have always been uneasy at the extent to which Anglo-Saxon law departs from reality in dealing with biological issues. The nervous shock cases which continue to be based on medical principles discarded during the 19th century provide a notorious example.

Type
Part I: New Reproductive Technologies
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 14 , Issue 3-4 , September 1986 , pp. 113 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1986

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