Regulation of Socially Problematic Medical Behavior (RSPMB)

Welcome to our website

The RSPMB research program consists of a number of projects involving the interdisciplinary and comparative study of questions concerning the regulation (legal or otherwise) of socially problematic medical behavior such as euthanasia, withholding or withdrawing 'futile' medical treatment, termination of life in neonatology, palliative and terminal sedation, research with human embryos, organ donation and transplantation, abortion, non-indicated medical treatment (such as cosmetic surgery and circumcision), the relationship between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, informed consent (including refusal of treatment and advance directives), the problem of medical mistakes, and so forth. The RSPMB program is the successor to the earlier MBPSL program, which was limited to medical behavior that potentially shortens life (in particular, euthanasia).

 Leading questions are:

• What sorts of (legal) regulation of RSPMB is required, in order to keep the social risks such behavior entails within acceptable limits?
• When, why and how does such regulation develop?
• Under what conditions can regulation of RSPMB be effective in actual medical practice?

The RSPMB program builds upon a line of research that has developed over the last 20 years in the Department of Legal Theory of the Faculty of Law, University of Groningen (the Netherlands), and now includes active collaboration with researchers in a number of other European countries. The disciplines involved in the program include medicine, ethics, law, sociology of law, anthropology, history, and political science.

The RSPMB program has produced a large number of articles in national and international journals, several dissertations (a list of the more important publications of members of the Research Group, especially those in English, can be found elsewhere on this website). The two most important publications to emerge from the program are:

• J. Griffiths, A. Bood and H. Weyers, Euthanasia and Law in the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998), a detailed historical,legal and empirical study of euthanasia and related forms of medical behavior that potentially shorten life, in the Netherlands.
• J. Griffiths, H. Weyers and M.Adams, Euthanasia and Law in Europe (Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2008), a successor to the earlier book, covering the Netherlands and Belgium in detail, with chapters by local experts on eight other European countries.

The current activities and recent publications members of the RSPMB Group, reviews by others of our books and reviews by members of the Research Group of books by others, as well as updates concerning current legal and other developments (in particular, of matters dealt with in Euthanasia and Law in Europe), are to be found in our Newsletter, which appears irregularly. All past numbers can be found elsewhere on this website.

Send reactions, questions, or requests to be added to (or deleted from) the mailing list of the Research Group's Newsletter to rspmb@rug.nl.