Doctors In Law

On Friday, February 11, 2005, the Rajendralall-Harendralall-Jyotilall Majumdar Memorial Lecture was delivered by Mr. Naranarayan Gooptu, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India, at the Calcutta Medical College. The topic for the session was 'Aspects Of Medical Law'. The session was presided over by the convenor, Mr. Sisir K. Majumdar, Founder-Director of the Majumdar Institute of History, Sociology And Philosophy of Science And Health Sciences, the Guest-in-Chief being Prof. Pratap Chandra Chunder.

Mr. Gooptu referred back to the Directive Principles of State Policy enunciated in the Indian Constitution to signify the importance of medical law. He confined his illuminating lecture to six most vital aspects of medical law, namely, medical negligence, informed consent, children and consent, medical confidentiality, abortion and euthanasia. His lively and lucid lecture covered such relevant issues like commercialisation of the medical profession, therapeutic privileges of doctors, societal norms influencing the framing of medical laws in a class-divided country, cloning, among others. Demarcating the doctors' criminal liabilities from their civil liabilities, Mr. Gooptu elucidated the relevant details pertaining to diagnosis and treatment, medical infrastructure, medical council, consumer laws, medical research that that tend to affect medical jurisprudence, with constant references to the development of medical law. His focus lay primarily on India.

The speech was followed by a Q-A session. Both Mr. Gooptu and Mr. Majumdar stressed on the subjective aspects of medical law interpretation to go with the human rights questions that invariably crop up in the framing and implementation of medical law, especially in India, that is a conglomerate of diversified opinions.