Field notes.

• Author: Bailey, Tracey M.

Health law and policy is an ever-expanding area of practice and research. While society may quickly associate health law with medical malpractice and personal injury law, in reality work in the area is a complex interdisciplinary pursuit which exists at the crossroads of numerous disciplines including science, economics, ethics, and the law.

A recent colloquium of graduate students and mentors held at the University of Toronto, part of the Health Law, Ethics and Policy Training Program supported by the CIHR and based at four universities with a focus on health law (Dalhousie University, Universite de Sherbrooke, University of Alberta and University of Toronto), evidenced the diversity of the field and the burgeoning scholarship and expansive capacity in Canada. This bodes well for enhanced creation of thoughtful law and policy and/or the critique of theory in the future.

The articles in this edition of the Health Law Review present a snapshot of the comprehensive scope of health law as they range from analysis of the hotly contested (and widely publicized) issue of public funding of in vitro fertilization, a critique of Canada's current research integrity standards, and, finally, a discussion of the health consequences of shark consumption.

In "The Governance of Research Integrity in Canada", author Zubin Master assesses recent reforms to Canada's national integrity policy framework, which is governed by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). This assessment concludes that further amendment to the national integrity policy framework is needed, and that "[t]he development of a strong and publically accountable Canadian research integrity system requires an all-encompassing approach...