Death by homeopathy: issues for civil, criminal and coronial law and for health service policy

Homoeopathy has a significant clinical history, tracing its roots back to Hippocrates and more latterly to Dr Christian (Samuel) Hahnemann (1755-1843), a Saxon physician. In the last 30 years it has ridden a wave of resurgent interest and practice associated with disillusionment with orthodox medicine and the emergence of complementary therapies. However, recent years have seen a series of meta-analyses that have suggested that the therapeutic claims of homeopathy lack scientific justification. A 2010 report of the Science and Technology Committee of the United Kingdom House of Commons recommended that it cease to be a beneficiary of NHS funding because of its lack of scientific credibility. In Australia the National Health and Medical Research Council is expected to publish a statement on the ethics of health practitioners' use of homoeopathy in 2013. In India, England, New South Wales and Western Australia civil, criminal and coronial decisions have reached deeply troubling conclusions about homoeopaths and the risk that they pose for counter-therapeutic outcomes, including the causing of deaths. The legal decisions, in conjunction with the recent analyses of homoeopathy's claims, are such as to raise confronting health care and legal issues relating to matters as diverse as consumer protection and criminal liability. They suggest that the profession is not suitable for formal registration and regulation lest such a status lend to it a legitimacy that it does not warrant.     

Umbilical cord blood banking: beyond the public-private divide

Umbilical cord blood is a source of haematopoietic progenitor cells, which are used to treat a range of malignant, genetic, metabolic and immune disorders. Until recently, cord blood was either collected through donations to publicly funded cord blood banks for use in allogeneic transplantation, or stored in commercial cord blood banks for use in autologous transplantation. The line between public and private cord blood banking is being blurred by the emergence of "hybrid" models that combine aspects of both the public and private systems. The authors describe these hybrid models and argue that their emergence is explained by both market forces and public sector policy They propose that the future of the sector will depend heavily on several key developments that will differentially affect public, private and hybrid banking models.     

Racially conditional donation: the example of umbilical cord blood

While direction of donated tissue to family members has long been accepted, direction to members of specific racial groups has been opposed, on the basis that it is discriminatory and contrary to the ethos the institution of organ donation seeks to promote. It has, however, recently been proposed that racially conditional donation may provide a useful--and ethically acceptable--way to address the social inequalities and injustices experienced by certain cultural groups. This article examines the ethical, legal and cultural arguments for and against racially conditional donation, concluding that the practice is more likely to undermine the values of equity and justice than to promote them and that it may also lead to other unfavourable personal and social outcomes.     

The Perversions of History: Constitutionalism and Revolution in Burke’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Reflections</Emphasis>

Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France is one of the defining texts in the history of English constitutional thought. It is conservative in its overt defence of England’s ancient constitution, and in particular the twin bulwarks of Church and Crown. In more immediate terms, it was written against those who appeared to sympathise with the principles of the French revolution, men such as Joseph Price and Tom Paine. But the true ‘genius’ of Burke, as Wordsworth famously noted, does not lie in the surface defence of traditional conservative institutions and principles. It lies, rather, in an appreciation that constitutions are aesthetic expressions, their vitality dependent upon the strength of the political imagination which they strive to shape and to nurture. What is truly distinctive about Burke’s Reflections accordingly is that it was written as a poetic as much as a political treatise. The purpose of this essay is to explore this genius and this poetic.     

The electoral connection in Australia: Candidate roles,campaign activity,and the popular vote

Studies of representational roles usually examine elected representatives rather than election candidates and make little attempt to link roles with either behavior or the popular vote that candidates attract. In this paper, we use 1990 Australian data to examine all major party election candidates, and show that candidates identify with three types of representational roles:locals, who focus on articulating local concerns and interests;partisans, who see their role in party political terms; andlegislators, who emphasize the parliamentary role of an elected representative. Incumbents, especially party leaders, focus on the partisan role. Candidates in each of these three types have different views of the qualities that a candidate should possess and emphasize different forms of campaign activity. In turn, these roles have a modest impact on the popular vote that candidates attract, net of other factors. In Australia, incumbents rely on national partisan forces for reelection, while challengers rely much more on their own efforts.