Ethical and Legal Perspectives in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: Foundational Issues

This book discusses how to deal ethically with people with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in the police, courts and correctional services. Ethical and legal issues associated with the deficits of individuals with a brain disorders such as FASD are surfacing more and more frequently in criminal proceedings. People with FASD often have not been diagnosed and rarely exhibit any visible evidence of the disorder. It has been argued that this invisible disability puts them in a disadvantaged position in the justice system, since the awareness of this condition is limited. The need to identify and to address FASD more effectively and the many ethical issues this raises within the context of the law is increasingly acknowledged within judicial and legislative branches, as well as in government departments, agencies and community programs that provide services to those with FASD and their caretakers and families. This is the first book to give to elaborate on ethical and legal issuesof FASD.

Egon Jonsson is Professor at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry in Edmonton, Canada, and at the Department of Community Health Sciences,  University of Calgary. Until recently he was the CEO of the Institute of Health Economics, in Edmonton. He was trained at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden, (PhD) and as a research associate at Harvard School of Public Health, US. Egon Jonsson is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and was a long time co-Editor of the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care. He was Executive Director and CEO of the Swedish Agency on Health Technology Assessment (SBU), and professor of health economics at the Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. He later worked for WHO to establish The Health Evidence Network (HEN), and as a health policy advisor at the Ministry of Health in Hanoi, Vietnam. His main field of research is in health economics, health technology assessment, evaluation of prevention programs and health practices. His current research includes a range of topics in mental health, early child hood development, including many issues of FASD on which he has published extensively.