New Book: The Law and Ethics of Dementia

The Law and Ethics of Dementia, co-edited by Israel Doron, Charles Foster and Jonathan Herring, recently released in hardback by Hart Publishing and available for e-readers in September, is definitely on my “must read” list.   Followers of this Blog will certainly recognize Issi Doron, from the University of Haifa, who has long exercised an international, comparative perspective on issues in ageing.  Professor Foster is a practicing barrister and a fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, which is also the working home of prolific writer and Law Professor Herring.

The book is organized into five parts, Medical Fundamentals, Ethical Perspectives, Legal Perspectives, Social Aspects, and Patient and Carer Perspectives. As part of the first section, physicians and researchers Amos Korczyn and Veronika Vakhapova co-author “Can Dementia be Prevented?” a question we all hope will be answered in the affirmative. Not surprisingly, given the title of the book, the section on ethical perspectives promises to be especially fascinating, offering multiple views on ethical components of decision making and care. To suggest the scope, Andrew McGee’s chapter is on “Best Interest Determinations and Substituted Judgement,” while Leah Rand and Mark Sheehan tackle the challenge of “Resource Allocation Issues in Dementia.”

In the Social Aspects section, I notice that Syracuse Law Professor Nina Kohn has a chapter on “Voting and Political Participation,” while Chinese (and University of Pennsylvania) health care scholar Ruijia Chen and colleagues address “Physical, Financial and Other Abuse.”

With more than forty individual chapters and dozens of international writers, this book promises to be a key guide  for the future.