3 - Thinking Outside the Box

Summary

Taking a lead from Graeme Laurie’s willingness to ‘think outside the box’ – typified by his more recent work on ‘liminality’ – this chapter has as its thrust the idea that medical jurisprudence needs to speak to more than the leading cases and the nice doctrinal questions. It also needs to get the regulatory environment right for the upcoming technological developments – in genetics, robotics, additive manufacturing, nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence,, machine learning etc. – that promise to transform medical practice. Following this line of argument, medical lawyers should think outside the box of Law 1.0, where traditional legal principles, concepts and precedents are applied to new technologies and novel applications; engage with the regulatory challenges, including the challenges of regulatory connection and effectiveness but particularly that of regulatory legitimacy, that are the subject of Law 2.0 thinking; and join the embryonic Law 3.0 conversation, which contemplates not only smart technological solutions to regulatory problems but also humans being taken out of the loop (as both regulators and regulatees).