Midlands Medical Law Consortium

The David Price Memorial Seminar Series

The Midlands Medical Law Consortium (involving academics from the Universities of Leicester, Birmingham, De Montfort and Nottingham Trent) organised a series of seminars/workshops examining the topic of ‘Faith and Belief and its Impact on the Development and Operation of Healthcare Law’ over a period of 2 years. This is a genuinely interdisciplinary subject area which involved participants from the fields of Law, Ethics, Philosophy, Theology, Sociology, Medicine and Political Theory, faith groups and patients' representatives.

Members Midlands Medical Law Consortium

Members of the Midlands Medical Law Consortium. Tracey Elliott (Leicester), Stephen Smith (Birmingham), Jo Samanta (De Montfort), Austen Garwood-Gowers (Nottingham Trent) , Liz Wicks (Leicester), José Miola (Leicester).

The Consortium is a newly formed, informal group of academics which seeks to develop its research objectives in a broad interdisciplinary fashion, and to establish broad networks for future collaborations. This topic for research arises from previous work done by several members of the Consortium. In particular, the seminar series builds on and remembers the work of the late Professor David Price, who helped to put together this bid and in whose honour we held the seminars.

Each seminar is designed by the lead researchers from those institutions (Garwood-Gowers, McHale, Miola, Samanta, Smith, Wicks) to develop the issues from their own particular specialist areas within heath care law.

The seminars involved academics from a variety of disciplines from (mainly UK) Universities within as well as outside the Consortium institutions, in addition to professionals, stakeholders and policy makers in various spheres, including: medicine (e.g. healthcare practitioners), regulatory agencies (e.g. General Medical Council, British Medical Association), patients and representatives of faith groups, with as wide a ‘spread’ as is practically feasible, both national and local – reflecting the religious and cultural diversity of the Midlands. There were also a number of free places made available at each seminar for interested academics, students, and professionals.

There were 6 seminars in all over a 20 month period, held across the institutions that are leads in the research group.

The programmes and PowerPoint slides (where available) for each seminar are contained within this website.

• Formulation, Content and Operation of Health Law in the UK (De Montfort University) - This seminar dealt with the influence of faith and belief on the formulation, content and operation of health law in the United Kingdom.
• Issues of Faith and Belief at the End of Life (University of Leicester) - This seminar explored issues relating to the role of religion, faith and belief at the end of life.
• Formulation, Content and Operation of Health Law in the UK (Nottingham Trent University) - This seminar was the second to explore the influence of faith and belief on formulation, content and operation of what are generally considered to be core or foundational issues in health law.
• Conscientious Objection (University of Birmingham) - This seminar explored the issue of conscientious objection and its impact upon healthcare law and ethics.
• Law and the Regulation of New Health Technologies (University of Birmingham) - 'Religion, Faith, Belief and the Scientific Imperative: Reconciling the Irreconcilable?' This seminar explored new regulatory challenges arising from the development of new health technologies.
• Donation of Body Parts for Transplantation and Research (De Montfort University) - This seminar examined issues of faith and belief and the donation of body parts for transplantation and research.