Sheila A.M. McLean

Professor McLean was the first holder of the International Bar Association Chair of Law and Ethics in Medicine at Glasgow University. She has been a Vice-Chairman of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee and has acted as a consultant/adviser to the World Health Organisation, the Council of Europe, UNESCO and a number of individual states. She has acted as legal adviser to the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology and the joint House of Lords/House of Commons Committee on the Human Tissue and Embryos Draft Bill. She has held a number of posts external to the University, including founding Chairperson of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, and has chaired a number of Governmental Committees, such as the review of the consent provisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, the Independent Review of the Removal and Retention of Organs at Post Mortem (Scotland), the Working Group on No Fault Liability for Medical Injury (Scotland) and the Expert Panel on Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (Scotland). She was also a member of the Expert Panel on Assisted Dying, Royal Society of Canada and was awarded a Brockington Visitorship at Kingston University, Ontario in 2011.

She has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, The Royal College of General Practitioners, The Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh), the Institute of Biology, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society of Arts, and has been awarded Honorary Degrees by the University of Edinburgh and the University of Abertay, Dundee. She has acted as an expert reviewer for many of the major grant awarding bodies and similar organisations both within and outside of the United Kingdom. She has published extensively in the area of medical law, has been on the Editorial Board of a number of national and international Journals and is regularly consulted by the media on matters of medical law and ethics. In 2005 she was awarded the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award at the Scottish Legal Awards. Her book, Assisted Dying: Reflections on the Need for Law Reform was awarded the Minty Prize of the Royal Society of Authors and the Royal Society of Medicine in 2008. She has published 10 monographs and edited 14 others. She took an early retirement in 2014, but continues to publish and engage in research.

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