Skip over navigation
This is a time of great interest in medical ethics and law. Huge questions are raised by advances in fields such as genetics and assisted reproduction. In a changing moral climate, debates about conflicts between mother and fetus, or about physician-assisted suicide, are very much alive. There are challenging questions about psychiatry, about the allocation of scarce medical resources, about the boundaries of the market in medicine, and about the law and ethics of medical research.
Medical Ethics & Law
|MA
|Part Time, Full Time
| Admissions status: OpenPURPOSE
For medical/legal professionals, graduates of a relevant discipline, those going on to research and for anyone wanting to think about and discuss some of the hardest human decisions. To study the methods of reasoning and analysis in ethics and law; to examine selected areas of health care and medical practice from a further perspective of medical ethics and law; to assist those involved in teaching or intending to teach in these areas.DESCRIPTION
Examines in depth the ethical and legal questions raised by medical practice and science. The programme was founded in 1978, and is an important part of the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, the first of its kind in the UK.This is a time of great interest in medical ethics and law. Huge questions are raised by advances in fields such as genetics and assisted reproduction. In a changing moral climate, debates about conflicts between mother and fetus, or about physician-assisted suicide, are very much alive. There are challenging questions about psychiatry, about the allocation of scarce medical resources, about the boundaries of the market in medicine, and about the law and ethics of medical research.
KEY FACTS
Programme leader/s
Professor Penney Lewis
Awarding institution
King's College London
Credit value (UK/ECTS equivalent)
UK 180/ECTS 90
Duration
One year FT, two years PT, September to September.
Location
Strand Campus.
Student destinations
Enhancement of existing career; more specialised area of law; personal development. Many alumni go on to work in policy-related positions including senior positions at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the Human Tissue Authority, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the Department of Health. We also have a number of alumni who have worked or are working in the BMA Ethics Department, for the GMC, Progress Educational Trust, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the King's Fund, and medical defence societies. A number of alumni are teaching ethics and/or law in medical schools. Students who go on to doctoral-level study also find academic positions in law schools and research centres.
Year of entry 2013
Offered by