The Medical Innovation Bill continues its journey through Parliament. On 23 January 2015, it was debated for the final time in the House of Lords and with one final amendment, the House moved to support the Bill, which then moved to the House of Commons on 26 January. It will be debated again on 27 February 2015. The Bill’s purpose is to encourage responsible innovation in medical treatment. Although this goal is laudable, it is argued that the Bill is unnecessary (...) and has the potential to undermine the very cause it aims to advance. More useful for encouraging responsible innovation is the continued education of health-care professionals on how the law already supports practitioners who look to improve care through responsible innovation. (shrink)

Surgical innovation involves practices, such as new devices, technologies, procedures, or applications, which are novel and untested. Although innovative practices are believed to offer an improvement on the standard surgical approach, they may prove to be inefficacious or even dangerous. This article considers how surgeons considering innovation should reason in the conditions of uncertainty that characterize innovative surgery. What attitude to the unknown risks of innovative surgery should they take? The answer to this question involves value judgments about the acceptability (...) of risk taking when satisfactory scientific information is not available. This question has been confronted in legal contexts, where risk aversion in the form of the precautionary principle has become increasingly influential as a regulatory response to innovative technologies that pose uncertain future hazards. This article considers whether it is appropriate to apply a precautionary approach when making decisions about innovative surgery. (shrink)

Demands for access to experimental therapies are frequently framed in the language of rights. This article examines the justifiability of such demands in the specific context of surgical innovations, these being promising but non-validated and potentially risky departures from standard surgical practices. I argue that there is a right to access innovative surgery, drawing analogies with other generally accepted rights in medicine, such as the right not to be forcibly treated, to buy contraceptives, and to choose to have an abortion, (...) including a post-viability abortion where the mother's life or health is threatened by the pregnancy. I argue that we accept these rights because we believe that people are entitled to try to preserve their lives and health and to make choices of an important and intensely personal kind, and I suggest that a person's choice of medical treatment should be seen in the same light. However, since few rights are absolute, I also consider the circumstances in which it may be justifiable to limit the right to access innovative surgery. In discussing this question, I apply the human rights standard of proportionality, comparing the importance of the reasons for limiting the right with the severity of the invasion on liberty. (shrink)