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Developments in preconception and prenatal technologies have led to undeniable advances in how health-care providers screen and treat patients. Despite these advances, at any point errors can occur leading to misdiagnosis or a missed diagnosis. In some instances, the missed information can lead to the birth of a child with health issues where short of the error, the decision to avoid conception or terminate the pregnancy might have been made. When these lapses unfold, there exists the potential for a wrongful birth or wrongful life lawsuit to ensue. While these 2 actions are based on the same set of events, they are distinct legal claims with varying degrees of judicial permissibility. Global legal acceptability of wrongful birth and life lawsuits tends to resemble patterns in the United States. Analyzing prior wrongful birth and wrongful life claims can reveal common trends in events leading to these types of lawsuits, as well as an understanding of their potential outcomes. A familiarity with wrongful birth and wrongful life lawsuits demonstrates how these cases are unique from other forms of prenatal or birth injury tort lawsuits and can provide insights to common shortcomings in clinical practice. Applying these lessons to clinical practice highlights key approaches towards limiting the risk of certain errors leading to wrongful birth and wrongful life lawsuits, with the goal of health-care providers offering high quality health care., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The Alabama Supreme Court recently held, in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine , that the parents of human embryos that were negligently destroyed at a fertility clinic could bring an action for damages under the State's wrongful death statute. Although the Alabama legislature promptly enacted a law essentially overturning the state supreme court's decision, concerns have been raised that the court's decision might influence courts in other States to interpret their wrongful death statutes, or possibly even their fetal homicide statutes, to apply in similar circumstances, thereby threatening the availability of in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology. This article addresses those concerns., With respect to wrongful death statutes, only fourteen States (excluding Alabama) have interpreted their statutes to apply to unborn children without regard to their stage of gestation or development. The majority of States impose a gestational requirement (typically, viability) which would preclude their application to the destruction of human embryos. Even with respect to the minority of States that impose no limitation on the cause of action, those statutes, either by their express language or by fair interpretation, would not apply to unimplanted human embryos., With respect to the fetal homicide statutes in thirty-one States that do not have any gestational or developmental limitation, the statutes in twenty-six of those States apply only to acts causing the death of an unborn child in utero . As to the statutes in the other five States, the structure of the statute, considered in light of the applicable case law, strongly suggests that there would be no liability for causing the death of an unborn child before implantation. In sum, the Alabama Supreme Court's decision in LePage is not likely to be followed as a precedent in interpreting either the wrongful death statutes or the fetal homicide statutes of any other State., (Copyright © 2024 by the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled, Inc.)

Under the Congenital Disabilities (Civil Liability) Act 1976 (CDCLA) a child born disabled as a result of an occurrence prior to its birth can bring a claim against the individual responsible for that occurrence. Significantly, mothers are exempt from liability (except in relation to negligent driving) but fathers are not. Since the CDCLA came into force in 1976, there have been significant shifts in the landscape in which it operates: a more gender-neutral model of parenting; transmission of an infection to a sexual partner can be a criminal offence; and growing evidence regarding the impact of prenatal events. In addition, there is a trend for presenting prenatal harm as a problem of individual behaviour. This article presents a timely consideration of the potential for parental liability under the CDCLA and asks whether restricting the exemption of parental liability to mothers but not fathers can be justified. It is argued that the reasons for unequal parental liability in relation to gestational harm are not sufficient to justify restricting the broad exemption to mothers but not fathers and a change in the law is required to bring the CDCLA up to date with advances in the criminal law, society, and medical science., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Litigation over medical mishaps - NHS Resolution - extent of damages and costs - the relationship between doctor and midwife - celebrated or notorious cases, Mid Staffs, Morecambe Bay, Northwick Park - informing patient of risks - meaning of wrongful birth - contemporary tests for negligence.

Wrongful birth cases were initially brought most often for failed contraception, sterilisation or termination of pregnancy. Claims have since arisen from alleged failures in the provision of pre-conception and antenatal advice leading to a loss of opportunity to commence or terminate a pregnancy, or for failures in assisted reproduction. Within that second category, breach of duty leading to the birth of a child with disabilities has not always been enough for the claimant parent/s to recover compensation or at least for all of the child's disabilities. Two key cases show the courts' focus on scope of duty issues - Waller v James and Khan v Meadows. Arguably the same outcomes could have been arrived at by consideration of normative causation. This article examines the two cases, but emphasises the fact-sensitive nature of those judgments in which scope of duty and normative causation filters may or may not apply., Competing Interests: None.

Background : Prenatal diagnosis enables detection of any disease or disability of the fetus during the pregnancy of a woman. Parents whose fetus is found to have a serious disorder from antenatal testing may terminate the pregnancy if it is permitted by the law or continue with the pregnancy to term. However, the chance of terminating a pregnancy may be denied if there is prenatal negligence by the medical practitioner in terms of diagnosis or failure to advise on the test results correctly. The purpose of this research is to examine the possible legal implications of prenatal diagnosis in Malaysia. Methods : This study adopts doctrinal legal research in which the researcher examines statutes and decided cases in Malaysia, the United Kingdom (UK) and Singapore relating to abortion, wrongful birth and wrongful life claims, in order to determine the legal implications of prenatal diagnosis in Malaysia. Results : In Malaysia, abortion following a prenatal diagnosis is only legally possible if the statutory criteria in the Penal Code are met. Abortion is illegal if it is not done for therapeutic purposes. A wrongful birth action brought by a woman who claims to be deprived of the opportunity to terminate her pregnancy may be successful in Malaysia, if it can be proven that a legal abortion could have been performed if not because of the prenatal negligence of the medical practitioner. However, a wrongful life action brought in the child's name for being allowed to be born with a disability may not be viable since the claim could hardly be established and it is against the public policy. Conclusions : Theoretically, it is possible to bring a wrongful birth action resulted from negligence in prenatal diagnosis successfully in Malaysia, but the chance is relatively slim for wrongful life action., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2021 Kuek CY.)

Background : Prenatal diagnosis enables detection of any disease or disability of the fetus during the pregnancy of a woman. Parents whose fetus is found to have a serious disorder from antenatal testing may terminate the pregnancy if it is permitted by the law or continue with the pregnancy to term. However, the chance of terminating a pregnancy may be denied if there is prenatal negligence by the medical practitioner in terms of diagnosis or failure to advise on the test results correctly. The purpose of this research is to examine the possible legal implications of prenatal diagnosis in Malaysia. Methods : This study adopts doctrinal legal research in which the researcher examines statutes and decided cases in Malaysia, the United Kingdom (UK) and Singapore relating to abortion, wrongful birth and wrongful life claims, in order to determine the legal implications of prenatal diagnosis in Malaysia. Results : In Malaysia, abortion following a prenatal diagnosis is only legally possible if the statutory criteria in the Penal Code are met. Abortion is illegal if it is not done for therapeutic purposes. A wrongful birth action brought by a woman who claims to be deprived of the opportunity to terminate her pregnancy may be successful in Malaysia, if it can be proven that a legal abortion could have been performed if not because of the prenatal negligence of the medical practitioner. However, a wrongful life action brought in the child's name for being allowed to be born with a disability may not be viable since the claim could hardly be established and it is against the public policy. Conclusions : Theoretically, it is possible to bring a wrongful birth action resulted from negligence in prenatal diagnosis successfully in Malaysia, but the chance is relatively slim for wrongful life action., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2022 Kuek CY.)

Background : Prenatal diagnosis enables detection of any disease or disability of the fetus during the pregnancy of a woman. Parents whose fetus is found to have a serious disorder from antenatal testing may terminate the pregnancy if it is permitted by the law or continue with the pregnancy to term. However, the chance of terminating a pregnancy may be denied if there is prenatal negligence by the medical practitioner in terms of diagnosis or failure to advise on the test results correctly. The purpose of this research is to examine the possible legal implications of prenatal diagnosis in Malaysia. Methods : This study adopts doctrinal legal research in which the researcher examines statutes and decided cases in Malaysia, the United Kingdom (UK) and Singapore relating to abortion, wrongful birth and wrongful life claims, in order to determine the legal implications of prenatal diagnosis in Malaysia. Results : In Malaysia, abortion following a prenatal diagnosis is only legally possible if the statutory criteria in the Penal Code are met. Abortion is illegal if it is not done for therapeutic purposes. A wrongful birth action brought by a woman who claims to be deprived of the opportunity to terminate her pregnancy may be successful in Malaysia, if it can be proven that a legal abortion could have been performed if not because of the prenatal negligence of the medical practitioner. However, a wrongful life action brought in the child's name for being allowed to be born with a disability may not be viable since the claim could hardly be established and it is against the public policy. Conclusions : Theoretically, it is possible to bring a wrongful birth action resulted from negligence in prenatal diagnosis successfully in Malaysia, but the chance is relatively slim for wrongful life action., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2022 Kuek CY.)

The implementation of non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) in Canada will be affected by legal norms. The law can shape physician behaviour, help to crystallize standards of care, influence utilization patterns, and reflect and reinforce patient expectations. In Canada, failure to inform a patient about NIPS, or misinterpretation of NIPS results, could result in a successful "wrongful birth" claim if the patient subsequently gives birth to a child with a condition that had been detectable. Given that research shows that physicians' decisions are influenced by concerns about liability, malpractice law seems likely to encourage increased recommendation and use of NIPS. Physicians' fiduciary and negligence-based disclosure standards require they consider both objective factors as well as a specific patient's subjective and reasonable beliefs, fears, desires, and expectations. Thus, physicians likely must address dominant public discourses and controversies relevant to NIPS. Given the existence of spin, hype, and misinformation about NIPS, there is an increasing need for a robust consent process and, when appropriate, genetic counselling. In sum, the law will define and bound the acceptable behaviour of physicians recommending or administering NIPS, and nudge the technology's implementation forward. Physicians and policymakers should be aware of the potential impact of these legal norms on both utilization and public expectations., (Copyright © 2020 The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada/La Société des obstétriciens et gynécologues du Canada. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This article discusses a recent ruling by the German Federal Court concerning medical professional liability due to potentially unlawful clinically assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH) at the end of life. This case raises important ethical and legal questions regarding a third person's right to judge the value of another person's life and the concept of 'wrongful life'. In our brief report, we discuss the concepts of the 'value of life' and wrongful life, which were evoked by the court, and how these concepts apply to the present case. We examine whether and to what extent value-of-life judgements can be avoided in medical decision-making. The wrongful-life concept is crucial to the understanding of this case. It deals with the question whether life, even when suffering is involved, could ever be worse than death. The effects of this ruling on medical and legal practice in Germany are to be seen. It seems likely that it will discourage claims for compensation following life-sustaining treatment (LST). However, it is unclear to what extent physicians' decisions will be affected, especially those concerning withdrawal of CANH. We conclude that there is a risk that LST may come to be seen as the 'safe' option for the physician, and hence, as always appropriate., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Negligent conduct by health care providers can result in medical malpractice injury sustained by parents denied their right to decide whether and when to have children. In this review of the international medicolegal literature, the authors present a comparative analysis of the law of medical negligence in this context and a discussion of the grounds for compensable injury resulting from medical error. The discussion is focused on the legal provisions for compensable injury awarded to the plaintiff (expectant mother, parents of the born child, and born child) and the types of injury various legal systems recognize in such cases. The aim of this article is to provide medical malpractice investigators and legal professionals with an overview of the birth cases.

"Wrongful birth" is a controversial medical malpractice claim raised by the mother of a child born with a disability against a medical professional whose failure to provide adequate prenatal information denied her the chance to abort. Plaintiff-mothers are required to testify that, but for the defendant's negligence, they would have terminated their pregnancy. Accordingly, alongside pro-life activists, disability rights advocates have opposed "wrongful birth" claims for stigmatizing and discriminating against people with disabilities by framing their very existence as a harm. Despite plaintiff-mothers' need for caretaking resources, scholars have recommended solutions ranging from the wholesale elimination of the wrongful birth claim to the curtailment of damages. To the extent scholars and the media have acknowledged mothers in the wrongful birth discourse at all, often it has been to blame and shame them for allegedly rejecting their children. They have paid little attention to the ways wrongful birth jurisprudence forces mothers to disavow their children in court, and thereby to forfeit the "good mother" ideal, in exchange for the possibility of securing necessary resources for their children. Commentators who question plaintiff-mothers' maternal devotion exacerbate the psychological toll the law already imposes. This Article shifts the blame from mothers to the legal system. While wrongful birth proceedings portray mothers' feelings about their children as categorically negative, real life accounts and social science findings reveal the true paradoxical experiences of all mothers, including plaintiff-mothers raising children with disabilities. To acknowledge this complex reality and mitigate the emotional strain of bringing a wrongful birth claim, this Article proposes several legal reforms: (1) broadening the analysis of emotional distress to reflect and legitimize mothers' paradoxical feelings about their children; (2) reframing the harm to mothers as loss of reproductive choice rather than as the birth of a flawed child and, accordingly, expanding available economic damages to include plaintiff-mothers' unexpected childcare responsibilities; and (3) educating plaintiffs' attorneys to empathize with the emotional aspects of mothers' litigation experiences and to counsel mothers accordingly. Today's approach to "wrongful birth" claims, which both stigmatizes disability and strains caretakers, demands urgent reform.

Most courts around the world have been refusing wrongful life actions. The main argument invoked is that the supposed compensable injury cannot be classified as such, since life is always a blessing no matter how hard and painful it is.In opposition to mainstream scholars and the dominant case law, this article sustains that life must be distinguished from living conditions, the former being the real injury at stake, since some living conditions are so intolerable that in themselves they justify a compensation within wrongful life actions.

Background: Prenatal diagnosis based on different technologies is increasingly used in developed countries and has become a common strategy in obstetric practice. The tests are crucial in enabling mothers to make informed decisions about the possibility of terminating pregnancy. They have generated numerous bioethical and legal controversies in the field of 'wrongful life' claims (action brought by or on behalf of a child against the mother or other people, claiming that he or she has to endure a not-worth-living existence) and 'wrongful birth' claims (action brought by the mother or parents against the physician for being burdened with an unwanted, often disabled child, which could have been avoided)., Objective and Rationale: The possibility which exists nowadays to intervene actively by programming and deciding the phases linked to procreation and birth has raised several questions worldwide. The mother's right to self-determination could be an end but whether or not this right is absolute is debatable. Freedom could, with time, act as a barrier that obstructs intrusion into other people's lives and their personal choices. Therapeutic choices may be manageable in a liberal sense, and the sanctity of life can be inflected in a secular sense. These sensitive issues and the various points of view to be considered have motivated this review., Search Methods: Literature searches were conducted on relevant demographic, social science and medical science databases (SocINDEX, Econlit, PopLine, Medline, Embase and Current Contents) and via other sources. Searches focused on subjects related to bioethical and legal controversies in the field of preimplantation and prenatal diagnosis, wrongful birth and wrongful life. A review of the international state of law was carried out, focusing attention on the peculiar issue of wrongful life and investigating the different jurisdictional solutions of wrongful life claims in a comparative survey., Outcomes: Courts around the world are generally reluctant to acknowledge wrongful life claims due to their ethical and legal implications, such as existence as an injury, the right not to be born, the nature of the harm suffered and non-existence as an alternative to a disabled life. Most countries have rejected such actions while at the same time approving those for wrongful birth. Some countries, such as France with a law passed in March 2002, have definitively excluded Wrongful Life action. Only in the Netherlands and in three states of the USA (California, Washington and New Jersey) Wrongful Life actions are allowed. In other countries, such as Belgium, legislation is unclear because, despite a first decision of the Court allowing Wrongful Life action, the case is still in progress. There is a complete lack of case law regarding wrongful conception, wrongful birth and wrongful life in a few countries, such as Estonia., Wider Implications: The themes of 'wrongful birth' and 'wrongful life' are charged with perplexing ethical dilemmas and raise delicate legal questions. These have met, in various countries and on certain occasions, with different solutions and have triggered ethical and juridical debate. The damage case scenarios result from a lack of information or diagnosis prior to the birth, which deprives the mother of the chance to terminate the pregnancy., (© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com)

Objective: To describe medical malpractice trends in patients with cleft and/or craniofacial abnormalities., Methods and Materials: A modified Delphi approach was used to gather search terms. Search settings included "all jury verdicts and settlements", with jurisdiction of "all states" and "all federal courts" (by court and circuit). A retrospective review of WestLawNext legal database was conducted. Cases were excluded if they did not have a direct association from the patient's craniofacial anomaly or if they were not related to malpractice., Results: Forty-two cases met inclusion criteria. Cases closed between 1981 and 2014 were included. The mean payment among claims with an indemnity payment was $3.9 million. Of cases brought to trial, 62% were in favor of the plaintiff. Amongst physicians named as co-defendants, pediatricians were most commonly named (24%), followed by plastic surgeons (16%), obstetricians (7.8%), and radiologists (7.8%). "Missed diagnosis" was the most common type of negligent claim (45%), followed by "surgical error" (21%), and "medication error" (17%). "Anoxic brain injury" resulted in the highest median indemnity payment for complication of patient management ($3.5 million), followed by "wrongful birth" ($1.03 million), and "minor physical injury" ($520,000). No specific type of negligent claim (p = 0.764) nor complication of patient management (p = 0.61) was associated with a greater indemnity payment. Mean indemnity payment was $920,000 prior to 2001 and $4.4 million after 2001 (p = 0.058)., Conclusions: Mean indemnity payments were fourteen-fold greater in patients as compared to those in the overall population ($3.9 million versus $274,887) and seven-fold greater than those in the average pediatric population ($3.9 million versus $520,923). All healthcare providers should be aware of the associated medical malpractice claims that may be incurred when treating patients at risk for these conditions., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This paper considers whether existing law could potentially be used to criminalize the transmission of genetic disease. The paper argues that even if an offence could be made out, the criminal law should not be involved in this context for many reasons, including the need to protect reproductive liberty and pregnant women's rights. The paper also examines whether there might be scope for civil claims between reproductive partners for a 'failure to warn' of potential genetic harm and argues there are strong policy grounds for resisting such claims. If such a duty were to exist, there might, in the future, be scope for a child to bring a claim under the Congenital Disabilities (Civil Liability Act) 1976. Such a claim could be for the failure by the child's father to warn her mother, which in turn led to the loss of opportunity to have treatment in utero which could have prevented the disability. It is suggested that the same arguments which supported granting maternal immunity under the Act would also support paternal immunity and that, therefore the issue of the lack of paternal immunity under the Act should be revisited.

This article discusses an anomaly in the English law of reproductive liability: that is, an inconsistency between the law's approach to wrongful life claims and its approach to cases of negligent selection of gametes or embryos in infertility treatments (the selection cases). The article begins with an account of the legal position, which brings into view the relevant inconsistency: while the law treats wrongful life claims as non-actionable, it recognises a cause of action in the selection cases, although the selection cases bear a relevant resemblance to wrongful life claims. The article then considers arguments that may be invoked in an attempt to reconcile the above two strands of the law. Three of these counterarguments consist in attempts to distinguish the selection cases from wrongful life claims. It is argued that these attempts fail to reveal a valid basis for treating these situations differently. A fourth possible counterargument levels against the present analysis a charge of reductio ad absurdum. It is shown that this argument suffers from a fundamental flaw caused by confusion between different senses of the term "identity". Finally, the article discusses possible changes to the legal position that could rectify the problem. It argues that one of these changes, which focuses on legal redress for violation of personal autonomy, is particularly apt to resolve the problem at hand, but also highlights the need for further inquiry into the broader implications of introducing this form of redress into the law of torts.

Although non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) marks a notable development in the field of prenatal genetic testing, there are some physician liability considerations raised by this technology. As NIPT is still emerging as the standard of care and is just starting to receive provincial funding, the question arises of whether physicians are obligated to disclose the availability of NIPT to eligible patients as part of the physician-patient discussion about prenatal screening and diagnosis. If NIPT is discussed with patients, it is important to disclose the limitations of this technology with respect to its accuracy and the number of disorders that it can detect when compared with invasive diagnostic options. A failure to sufficiently disclose these limitations could leave patients with false assurances about the health of their fetuses and could raise informed consent and liability issues, particularly if a child is born with a disability as a result.

A recent decision of the Italian Highest Court for the first time legitimized wrongful life suits. The Court stated the following principles: (a) the contract between the mother and the doctor has also protective effects in favour of third parties (father, siblings and the disabled child) who have the right to be compensated; (b) the right to compensation is neither based on the right not to be born nor on the right to be born healthy, but rather it is based on the breach of duty of care which coincides with the child's disabled status; (c) siblings may suffer the reduced availability of their parents; (d) the doctor is held responsible for not providing full information to the mother about the foetal deformity. The Supreme Court once again emphasized the importance of information on the matter of very personal choices, such as termination of pregnancy in case of foetal malformations. In the present case, the gynaecologist breached the duty to inform, especially after the patient requested diagnostic tests designed to highlight any foetal malformations and informed the doctor of the possibility of an eventual subsequent termination of pregnancy if foetal malformations were found.

While case law in cases of wrongful conception, wrongful birth and wrongful life is completely missing in Estonia, this article is aimed at providing possible solutions under Estonian law to some of the legally complex problems that these cases contain. Through the analysis of Estonian, German and U.S. legal literature and case law, the article is mainly focused on proposing some solutions to the legal problems concerning compensable damage, but also explains the Estonian legal framework of the contractual and delictual basis for compensation for the damages. The application of several grounds for the possibility of limiting the compensation in the afore-mentioned cases are analysed.

This article analyses the ability of parents and resulting children to claim compensation for negligent pre-birth genetic testing in New Zealand. It looks first at whether the parents and/or the child can claim compensation under New Zealand's statutory compensation scheme. It then assesses whether there are any remedies in tort, namely the torts of wrongful birth or wrongful life, that the parents or the child could use. It concludes that, at present, there is no legal ability for either the parents or the child to obtain compensation for negligent pre-birth genetic testing in New Zealand.

Recently, a court in Belgium awarded a sum of 400 000 euros to the parents of a child with disability who at that point had already died of Sanfilippo syndrome. Their charge was not that the baby was born with disability, but that the child was born. The charge was brought in the child's name, and so effectively, the child had sued against its own birth. This so-called 'unique case' is analyzed with the work of the German philosopher Odo Marquard. Marquard's work on theodicy, and the question of suffering and evil, is very useful to explain why this case is the current apotheosis of a logic present in modernity: existence as a tribunal. This paper explains why Marquard's work sheds an interesting light on this case for today's medicine., (© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Since March 1st, 2010, French citizens have been able to call on a new legal procedure for defending their rights: the priority preliminary ruling on issues of constitutionality (question prioritaire de constitutionnalité, QPC). If, during a trial, a citizen considers that a provision of the applicable law is inconsistent with the Constitution of the French Republic, he/she may request that the matter be referred to the Constitutional Council. One ofthe first QPCs concerned legislation related to the Perruche jurisprudence. In a ruling on November 17th, 2000, the French Supreme Court of Appeal had granted the child Nicolas Perruche the right to financial compensation for the material costs related to his physical disability (caused by congenital rubella). In response, Article 1 of the Patients' Rights and Quality of Care Act (passed on March 4th, 2002) prohibited the award of compensation to a child "just because he/she has been born [with a disability]", i.e. in "wrongful life" claims. Since the enactment of the Act, compensation in a case like Perruche may only be awarded to cover the parents' psychological suffering, rather than the child's status at birth. The application of this "anti-wrongful life claim" legislation has since been subject of heated debate. In a QPC ruling on June 11th, 2010, the Constitutional Council found that Article 1 of the Patients' Rights and Quality of Care Act was (with the exception of its transitional provisions) indeed consistent with the Constitution of the French Republic.

Objective: To study legal cases against IVF facilities pertaining to preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) misdiagnosis., Design: Systematic case law review., Setting: University medical center using US legal databases., Patient(s): The IVF recipients using PGD services., Intervention(s): Lawsuits pertaining to PGD against IVF facilities., Main Outcome Measure(s): Lawsuits, court rulings, damage awards, and settlements pertaining to PGD after the birth of a child with a genetic defect., Result(s): Causes of action pertaining to PGD arise from negligence in performing the procedure as well as failure to properly inform patients of key information, such as inherent errors associated with the PGD process, a facility's minimal experience in performing PGD, and the option of obtaining PGD. Courts have sympathized with the financial burden involved in caring for children with disabilities. Monetary damage awards are based on the costs of caring for children with debilitating defects, including lifetime medical and custodial care., Conclusion(s): Facilities offering PGD services expose themselves to a new realm of liability in which damage awards can easily exceed the limits of a facility's insurance policy. Competent laboratory personnel and proper informed consent--with particular care to inform patients of the inherent inaccuracies of PGD--are crucial in helping deter liability., (Copyright © 2012 American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The main scope of the article is the bioethical and legal issues of wrongful birth and wrongful life with reference to doctors' medical liability. Nowadays, prenatal tests tend to substitute the eugenic practice of Spartan inspection to raise a strong and healthy child. Should the doctor misinform the parents that the child is healthy and the parents do not exercise the right to abort the pregnancy, the doctor can be held liable and claims on wrongful life or birth are raised against him. "Wrongful life" is an oxymoron itself since "life" which has an intrinsic value and sanctity is attributed a negative aspect and is regarded as damage. Courts around the world have awarded parents compensation on that legal ground. In the Perruche affair (2000), where the mother was wrongly diagnosed and gave birth to Nicholas, who had serious neurological problems, the court conferred the right on the child itself, causing an uproar in France. The decision was criticized for encouraging eugenics and diminishing the value of handicapped people. The different approaches to the above issues by different courts around the world (US, EU) with reference to (bio) ethical concerns are going to be examined. We will try to give an answer on whether it is possible for courts to support on legal and bioethical grounds that a child with disabilities should not have been born as a result of the doctor's negligent conduct. In such cases, the limits of normality and the value of life are challenged

Health professionals are well versed in the need to have systems in place which avoid mishaps happening to patients due to human error or breakdown in communications: for example, legal actions for damages for operations wrongfully performed on patients due to a failure in the identification process; surgery involving the wrong limb or organ; medications being given to the wrong patient. Hospitals set in place systems by which a patient's name and procedures to be performed are checked multiple times throughout the patient's stay. This process is particularly vital when a patient is undergoing a surgical procedure which will be performed under anaesthesia. Nevertheless, systems failures continue to occur resulting in claims for damages by affected patients.

The sanctity of human life is a fundamental human value and the medical profession has been ethically charged with respecting and enhancing the value of all human beings' lives. However, disability-selective abortion has been perceived as an acceptable health intervention to eliminate disabilities, and is provided for in law as well as in policies and healthcare programmes related to disability. Advanced medical technologies are being utilised not to maximise the lives of persons with disabilities but to prevent the birth of disabled people by medically terminating foetuses diagnosed with disability. Evidently, disability is seen as undesirable per se by society, and life with disability as not worth living. The disability rights perspective argues that such laws, policies and programmes deny persons with disabilities the right to life and thereby discriminate against them. They violate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that recognises the inherent human dignity of all human beings and treats persons with disabilities on an equal basis with all other human beings. This paper examines the question of whether disability-selective abortion as a prevention strategy diminishes the value of persons with disabilities, in the context of the right to life and dignity of life accorded by the UNCRPD to persons with disabilities. This is discussed in the context of a selected summary of international and Indian policy and law on this subject.

Objective: To discuss the legal rights of reproductive endocrinologists and HIV-seropositive patients seeking infertility services., Design: Westlaw and LexisNexis commercial legal search engines were used to perform a legal review of statutes and cases pertaining to HIV-seropositive patients seeking health care services., Conclusion(s): Human immunodeficiency virus antidiscrimination laws apply to healthcare providers whether they practice in private clinics or a university setting. Patients infected with HIV cannot be denied access to health services solely on the basis of their HIV status. If proof exists that HIV-seropositive patients will medically benefit by a referral to another provider with more expertise, it is legally permissible to refer these patients to another provider who has more expertise in providing infertility services to HIV-seropositive patients. However, the burden will be on the reproductive endocrinologist to demonstrate that he or she lacks the capability to care for HIV-seropositive patients and that the referral was for the medical benefit of the patient and of the patient's potential offspring.

"It's a Wonderful Life," the title of Frank Capra's classic 1946 movie, seems to encapsulate a fundamental all-American conviction. Unsurprisingly, several courts and jurists have applied the movie-title maxim as the ultimate retort to one of the most intriguing questions in modern tort discourse: Is it possible to say that a severely disabled child has been harmed by the mere fact of being born? Wrongful life claimants answer in the affirmative, whereas Capra's aphorism makes a compelling counter-argument. In my opinion, the contrasting views represent equally legitimate subjective beliefs rather than objective truths, so neither may ever prevail. Without a satisfactory solution from conventional wisdom, the life-as-injury debate may be the Gordian knot of tort law. The purpose of this Article is to cut, rather than untie, the knot: Allow the child to recover without challenging or validating the deep-seated perception of life. Part I shows that hostility to liability in tort for wrongful life is almost universal, crossing lands and seas. Part II argues that this demurral is ultimately rooted in the absence of one of the central components of the cause of action. A tort action must fail because of the inability--both logical and practical--to establish "harm" under the traditional definition of this term. Part III opines that because the Gordian knot of tort law cannot be untied, it must be cut altogether. We must replace the traditional tort framework, which gives rise to an insoluble problem, with a more promising contractual framework inspired by the celebrated case of Hawkins v. McGee. In my view, the child may base an action on the claim that the defendant promised the parents that the child would be born without a certain defect and that the promise went unfulfilled. In formal terms, the child is an intended third party beneficiary of the contract between the parents and the consultant in which the latter warranted birth without a particular disability. The warranty of the future child's physical integrity and health, an integral and inseparable part of the contract, should form the basis of the child's cause of action.

The capacity to diagnose fetal disease or abnormality continues to grow, especially in the genetic definition of the fetus. With this growth have come claims of medical malpractice that have mostly centered on a failure of informed consent. Failure may occur by omission or failed communication of pertinent information to the parents or by alleged error in the interpretation of diagnostic information. The usual claim against a physician or other provider is not that of causing damage or disease in the fetus but of causing a loss of opportunity to prevent conception or live birth of an infant who has an abnormality. Successful suits for "wrongful birth," brought by parents of an abnormal child, are common in many United States jurisdictions, but suits for "wrongful life," brought on behalf of the child, have usually been denied.

Preterm birth remains the leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality in the world today. This article discusses ways the treatment team can inform parents of probable outcomes and help them reach decisions about treatment for the newborn under emotionally fraught conditions. In addition to supporting the patient, these approaches may help the clinician avoid malpractice litigation.

This article describes the evolution and stutter steps in the legal developments surrounding the controversial claims for "wrongful conception," "wrongful birth," and "wrongful life." These claims arise from negligence in a failed vasectomy/tubal ligation resulting in an unwanted pregnancy and from negligence in failing to perform or properly interpret genetic testing resulting in the inability of parents to make an informed decision whether to terminate a pregnancy where a child would be, and ultimately is, born with serious genetic defects.

More than any other innovation, ultrasound has revolutionized the practice of obstetrics and gynecology in one generation. Unfortunately, there are medical legal risks of which all practitioners should be aware. This article discusses the general aspects of a medical negligence case as they relate to the performance of the obstetric ultrasound examination, summarizes the recommendations of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine regarding the performance of these examinations, outlines potential areas of negligence, and discusses ways to avoid them.

The Australian High Court recently found that the common law could allow parents to claim tortious damages when medical negligence was proven to have led to the birth of an unplanned, but healthy, baby (Cattanach v Melchior (2003) 215 CLR 1). In Harriton v Stephens (2006) 80 ALJR 791; [2006] HCA 15 and Waller v James; Waller v Hoolahan (2006) 80 ALJR 846; [2006] HCA 16 the High Court in a six-to-one decision (Kirby J dissenting) decided that no such claim could be made by a child when medical negligence in failing to order an in utero genetic test caused the child severe disability. In an era when almost all pregnancies will soon require patented fetal genetic tests as part of the professional standard of care, the High Court, by barring so-called "wrongful life" (better termed "wrongful suffering") claims, may have created a partial immunity from suit for their corporate manufacturers and the doctors who administer them. What lessons can be learnt from this case about how the Australian High Court is, or should be, approaching medical negligence cases and its role as guardian of the Australian common law?

The pronouncement of the Dutch Supreme Court in a 'wrongful-life' case is convincing and does justice to the interests of the child, the parents and society. With its thorough and meticulous method of axiomatisation the Supreme Court has found the correct balance between the natural emotions of those concerned and the financial interests that were at issue.