Reading academic represents UK at international workshop

Thursday, 12 January 2012

Dr Thérèse Callus, Senior Lecturer in the School of Law is the UK representative on the steering committee of an international Network that aims to promote international and multidisciplinary research on questions of biomedical ethics (a broad field of study that concerns itself with the theoretical aspects of medicine).

The Network brings together experts in biomedical law from across Europe, North and South America, Africa and from Japan.

Dr Callus recently presented a paper at the fourth international workshop of the Network in Tozeur, Tunisia. Her paper was on Bioethics on the Female Body (The Female Body and Biomedicine: Reflections on Autonomy, Liberty and Responsibility in English law).

One aspect of Dr Callus' paper explored how advances in biomedicine have been both liberating and exploitative for women, and how the law has been used to serve both ends.

This reflects one of her research interests - the regulation by law of scientific advances which allow women to avoid conception via contraception, abortion or surrogacy while at the same time, assisting conception techniques by various means.

Dr Callus said: "The venue for this meeting was particularly poignant: held at a time of great democratic movement in Tunisia, the Workshop bore witness to the importance of recognising the free choice of all (irrespective of gender) which was aptly illustrated by the exploration of how law is used to regulate, liberate and, potentially exploit, the application of biomedicine to the female body."