Professor Richard Huxtable

Summary

Richard’s research primarily concerns legal and ethical issues in end-of-life decision-making, surgery and paediatrics. He is the author of Law, Ethics and Compromise at the Limits of Life: To Treat or Not to Treat? (Routledge-Cavendish, 2012), Euthanasia, Ethics and the Law: From Conflict to Compromise (Routledge-Cavendish, 2007) and (with Dickenson & Parker) The Cambridge Medical Ethics Workbook (CUP, 2nd edn, 2010), plus numerous articles and chapters. His research has been funded by organisations including the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission and he has given invited presentations at the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal College of Surgeons, as well as conferences worldwide.

Biography

Richard Huxtable is Professor of Medical Ethics & Law, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Ethics in Medicine at the University of Bristol.  He has held visiting positions at the Ethox Centre in the University of Oxford, the Centre for Biomedical Ethics in the National University of Singapore and the Hastings Center, New York. A long-standing participant in clinical ethics consultation, Richard is a member of the UHBT Clinical Ethics Advisory Group and a Trustee of the National Council for Palliative Care.

Teaching

Richard has an extensive teaching portfolio, and his teaching has been commended by the General Medical Council and Universities UK. Richard directs the intercalated BSc (Hons) in Bioethics, as well as leading sessions on the MBChB Medicine, the MSc in Health Care Ethics and Law, and continuing professional development and other programmes.

Keywords

• medical law
• medical ethics
• end-of-life decision-making
• surgery
• paediatrics
• compromise

Expertise

Research focuses on medical law and ethics, particularly decision-making at the end of life (e.g. assisted dying, withdrawing treatment, advance directives), in surgery (e.g. facial transplantation, separation of conjoined twins), and in relation to children and young people (e.g. children's rights to consent to, and refuse, treatment).

Memberships

Organisations

School of Social and Community Medicine

Centres, collaborations and units

• Centre for Ethics in Medicine

Recent publications

• Birchley, G, Huxtable, R, Murtagh, M, Meulen, Rt, Flach, P & Gooberman-Hill, R, 2017, ‘Smart homes, private homes? An empirical study of technology researchers' perceptions of ethical issues in developing smart-home health technologies’. BMC Medical Ethics, vol 18.
• Birchley, G, Gooberman-Hill, R, Deans, Z, Fraser, J & Huxtable, R, 2017, ‘'Best interests' in paediatric intensive care: an empirical ethics study’. Archives of Disease in Childhood.
• Huxtable, R & Birchley, G, 2017, ‘Seeking Certainty? Judicial Approaches to The (Non-)Treatment of Minimally Conscious Patients’. Medical Law Review.
• Huxtable, R, 2017, ‘Depression and Assisted Dying: Putting the Black Dog to Sleep?’. in: Charles Foster, Jonathan Herring (eds) Depression: Law and Ethics. Oxford University Press
• Main, B, McNair, A, Huxtable, R, Donovan, J, Thomas, S, Kinnersley, P & Blazeby, J, 2017, ‘Core information sets for informed consent to surgical interventions: baseline information of importance to patients and clinicians’. BMC Medical Ethics, vol 18.
• Huxtable, R, 2017, ‘Friends, foes, flatmates: on the relationship between law and bioethics’. in: Jon Ives, Mikey Dunn, Alan Cribb (eds) Empirical bioethics: practical and theoretical perspectives. Cambridge University Press
• Huxtable, R, 2017, ‘Judgment 2: Re A (Conjoined Twins: Surgical Separation) [2001] Fam 147’. in: Stephen W Smith, John Coggon, Clark Hobson, Richard Huxtable, Sheelagh McGuinness, Jose Miola , Mary Neal (eds) Ethical Judgments: Re-Writing Medical Law. Hart Publishing, Oxford, pp. 18-23
• Huxtable, R, 2017, ‘Judgment 1: R (on the Application of Nicklinson and Another) v Ministry of Justice [2014] UKSC 38’. in: Stephen W Smith, John Coggon, Clark Hobson, Richard Huxtable, Sheelagh McGuinness, Jose Miola, Mary Neal (eds) Ethical Judgments: Re-Writing Medical Law. Hart Publishing, Oxford, pp. 202-207
• Jones, K, Birchley, G, Huxtable, R, Clare, L, Walter, T & Dixon, J, 2016, ‘End of life care: A scoping review of experiences of Advance Care Planning for people with dementia’. Dementia: the international journal of social research and practice.
• McNair, AGK, Whistance, RN, Forsythe, RO, Macefield, R, Rees, J, Pullyblank, AM, Avery, KNL, Brookes, ST, Thomas, MG, Sylvester, PA, Russell, A, Oliver, A, Morton, D, Kennedy, R, Jayne, DG, Huxtable, R, Hackett, R, Dutton, SJ, Coleman, MG, Card, M, Brown, J & Blazeby, JM, 2016, ‘Core Outcomes for Colorectal Cancer Surgery: A Consensus Study’. PLoS Medicine, vol 13.

View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system