Forensic Pharmacology : Medicines, Mayhem, and Malpractice

Forensic Pharmacology, written for doctors and lawyers, is a clear guide to using pharmacology to solve legal problems in many different fields, including drunken driving, murder, drug-induced amnesia (memory loss), negligence, and adverse reactions to drugs.

Forensic Pharmacology offers a unique and comprehensible account of pharmacological methods and knowledge, and how to use them to solve problems in crimes from drunken driving to murder. It also deals with negligence in giving drugs, and adverse reactions to drugs. The text is enlivened by cases from the literature and from the authors'' experience. Appendices give detailed examples of pharmacological problems and their solutions; tables and equations for alcohol calculations; and data for medicines encountered in forensic work.Experts do not always understand what lawyers want of them, and lawyers fail to appreciate that experts in medicine and pharmacology may not be experts in the law. The section entitled ''legal considerations'' was written by a barrister with wide experience of using expert evidence and explains clearly the legal principles. It also contains some helpful hints on how to deal with court procedure and adversarial lawyers.