The first IVF baby was born in the 1970s. Less than 20 years later, we had cloning and GM food, and information and communication technologies had transformed everyday life. In 2000, the human genome was sequenced. More recently, there has been much discussion of the economic and social benefits of nanotechnology, and synthetic biology has also been generating controversy.
This important volume is a timely contribution to increasing calls for regulation - or better regulation - of these and other new technologies. Drawing on an international team of legal scholars, it reviews and develops the role of human rights in the regulation of new technologies. Three controversies at the intersection between human rights and new technology are given particular attention. First, how the expansive application of human rights could contribute to the creation of a brave new world of choice, where human dignity is fundamentally compromised; second, how new technologies, and our regulatory responses to them, could be a threat to human rights; and, third, how human rights could be used to create better regulation of these technologies.

Health is a matter of fundamental importance in European societies, both as a human right in itself, and as a factor in a productive workforce and therefore a healthy economy. New health technologies promise improved quality of life for patients suffering from a range of diseases, and the potential for the prevention of incidence of disease in the future. At the same time, new health technologies pose significant challenges for governments, particularly in relation to ensuring the technologies are safe, effective, and provide appropriate value for (public) money. To guard against the possible dangers arising from new health technologies, and to maximize the benefits, all European governments regulate their development, marketing, and public financing. In addition, several international institutions operating at European level, in particular the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the European Patent Office, have become involved in the regulation of new health technologies. They have done so both through traditional 'command and control' legal measures, and through other regulatory mechanisms, including guidelines, soft law, 'steering' through redistribution of resources, and private or quasi-private regulation. This collection analyses European law and its relationships with new health technologies. It uses interdisciplinary insights, particularly from law but also drawing on regulation theory, and science and technology studies, to shed new light on some of the key defining features of the relationships and especially the roles of risk, rights, ethics, and markets. The collection explores the way in which European law's engagement with new health technologies is to be legitimized, and discusses the implications for biological or biomedical citizenship.

This book aims to bolster the burgeoning discourse of health and human rights. In so doing, it charts the history of the linkage between health and human rights. It also pinpoints the sense of imperative that surrounds this relationship. More importantly, the book identifies a series of threats and challenges facing attempts to link health and human rights and proposes how these might be addressed. Amongst other things, it asks: is conflict between risk and rights inevitable in the context of infectious disease control? Is reproductive choice a bad argument in the context of reproductive technologies? Is it sensible for human rights to make use of measurement tools such as indicators? Is the 'cost of human rights' an argument that can and should be used by proponents of human rights? The answers it gives to these questions are original and engaging and will be of great interest to a diverse audience, including scholars and policy-makers in these areas.

"Whitty, Murphy and Livingstone on Civil Liberties Law is a new and innovative student text which looks at all the major areas of civil liberties law. The text deals with fair trial, public order, terrorism, prisoners, the secret state, privacy, equality and hate speech and includes the Human Rights Act 1998. It is ideal for students taking the proliferating number of civil liberties or human rights courses, as well as those studying constitutional and public law courses."