Requiem or renaissance for the law reform commission of Canada?

Abstract

From 1975 to 1992, the protection of life project of the Law Reform Commission of Canada sought to help society answer some of the legal and bioethical riddles posed by the biomedical revolution, particularly as these developments affected the protection of human life, public safety and fundamental values. A focus on the risks, benefits, rights and duties associated with biomedical sciences and technology provided the project both a means of inquiry into pressing health law and bioethics questions, and a methodology of law reform. The inquiry was often applied through a transdisciplinary perspective, to such topics as the redefinition of death, medically assisted procreation, behavioral alteration, human experimentation, organ transplantation, consent, and the criminal law. Amid recent initiatives to resurrect the Commission, the contributions of the protection of life project are likely to be judged by the bioethico-legal decision-making, dispute resolution, legislative or regulatory enactments and court decisions influenced by its corpus of thought.