Professor Sheila McLean

Sheila A.M. McLean LLB. MLitt, PhD, LLD, LLD, FRSE, FMediSci, FBS, FRCGP, FRCP(Ed), FRSA

Professor Sheila 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 remains a member of that 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 Group on 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).  Her work in some of these areas has led to legislative reform, for example in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Deceased Fathers) Act 2003 and the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006.  She currently chairs the National Donation Strategy Group established by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. 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. 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.  In 2009, she was appointed to the Royal Society of Canada’s Expert group on assisted dying.  In 2011, she was awarded Brockington Visitorship at Kingston University, Ontario. She has been Principal Investigator on a number of research grants and has authored or co-authored some 10 books, and edited a further 14.