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A Jurisprudential Analysis Of Government Intervention And Prenatal Drug Abuse, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses the serious public health problem of substance abuse among pregnant women. Part I of this article introduces the national problem of prenatal drug abuse. Part II discuses the appropriateness of government intervention. The article explains the medical consequences of prenatal drug abuse, and then, describes the justification of government intervention. The article details both existing criminal law and new legislation regarding prenatal drug abuse. Part III addresses constitutional concerns and the conflict between a woman’s right on the one hand and the state interest and “fetal rights” on the other. Part IV considers the moral and legal …

Proxy Consent To Organ Donation By Incompetents, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Will Price Control Legislation Satisfactorily Address The Issue Of High Prescription Drug Prices?: Several States Are Waiting In The Balance For Phrma V. Concannon, Shawna Lydon Woodward

Seattle University Law Review

Section II of this Note will discuss Canada's prescription drug pricing scheme and why prescription drugs cost significantly more in the United States. Section III will discuss PhRMA v. Concannon, in cluding an analysis of the parties' arguments on price controls for pre- scription drugs. Section IV will illustrate that Washington's current role in the battle on prescription drug pricing is inadequate to provide accessible and affordable prescription drugs for its citizens. Section V concludes with the proposal that Washington adopt new legislation modeled after the Maine Act to Establish Fairer Pricing for Prescription Drugs, which created the Maine Rx …

Genetic Enhancement, Distributive Justice, And The Goals Of Medicine, Mark A. Hall

San Diego Law Review

In this brief Essay, I focus on chapter 4 of the book’s discussion of the distinction between treatment and enhancement.

This distinction is at the core of many of the most challenging problems of ethics and public policy raised by genetics. This is also the place where there appears to be disagreement or ambivalence among these authors

and where fault

lines appear in their otherwise remarkably united front.

Punishing Reproductive Choices In The Name Of Liberal Genetics, Alexander Morgan Capron

San Diego Law Review

When the four American moral philosophers who individually have already made the most significant contributions to the ethical analysis of contemporary health care and medicine collaborate, it should come as no surprise that their joint effort is a lucid and powerful analysis of the principles that a just and humane society would employ in setting policies about how the new tools of molecular genetics should be used for human betterment. In From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler aimed to steer a middle course between two extreme models. The first …

How Not To End Disability, Janet Radcliffe Richards

San Diego Law Review

When advances in genetic technology offer the chance of preventing or curing disease and disability, it is one thing to recommend caution on the grounds that these obvious benefits may be outweighed by associated harms. It is quite another to deny even that there are benefits to be outweighed, and that attempts to prevent disability by these means should be resisted outright. That, however, is a view that is increasingly widespread in the disability rights movement.

Is Moral Theory Perplexed By New Genetic Technology?, Richard J. Arneson

San Diego Law Review

From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice

intelligently addresses difficult issues at the intersection of medical ethics and the theory of justice. The authors Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler repeatedly emphasized their opinion that advances in genetic technology force upon us entirely new ethical questions that previous moral theories lack the resources to resolve.

The claim that

new scientific discoveries render previous moral theories obsolete should be regarded with suspicion. Suspicion should be further aroused when readers note another feature of the authors’ theorizing that neatly fits the claim that we stand at the dawn …

The Ethics Of Genetic Intervention: Human Research And Blurred Species Boundaries, Rebecca Dresser

San Diego Law Review

From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice1

is a well-written and tightly argued analysis. This Essay addresses two topics meriting more attention than they received from these authors. First, this Essay considers in greater detail a topic the book briefly addresses—the human research necessary to support clinical use of genetic interventions. What appears as simply a step along the way to clinical benefits may actually present serious impediments. Second, this Essay expands on a point the authors mentioned only in passing. They noted that developments in

genetics are blurring traditional species boundaries. Blurred boundaries between humans and other species raise …

Does Technological Enhancement Of Human Traits Threaten Human Equality And Democracy?, Michael H. Shapiro

San Diego Law Review

This Article outlines some of the moral, legal, and general policy difficulties that societies and individuals will face if technological enhancements via germ line and somatic mechanisms become possible. It identifies and analyzes some of the conceptual structures necessary to explain the nature of these difficulties, suggests some alternative basic scenarios—such as greater or lesser scarcity of technological enhancement resources, impacts on how we perceive each other, and different remediation patterns—and then maps and reverse maps the projected technological developments against the value and legal structures. This Article also describes and comments on what may seem to be, from our …

Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan: 2001 Epilogue, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

Japan is on a steeper trajectory toward the incorporation of informed consent principles into medical practice than the “gradual transformation” observed in a 1996 article, Informed Consent and Patients’ Rights in Japan. Among the most significant recent developments from 1996 to 2001 have been these seven: (1) the 1997 enactment of the Organ Transplantation Law permitting the use of brain death criteria in limited circumstances in which informed consent is present; (2) the strengthening of patients’ rights in clinical drug trials; (3) the continued trend toward increasing disclosure to patients of cancer diagnoses; (4) initiatives by the health ministry toward …

Recurring Nightmare: Barriers To Effective Treatment Of Hiv In The United States And Internationally, John G. Culhane

John G. Culhane

Developing nations face many of the same barriers to the effective prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS as the developed nations. The article examines successful and unsuccessful approaches to prevention in the United States, and compares these to the obstacles faced by those attempting to deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic in other nations. It suggests ways of addressing deeply rooted obstacles such as the treatment of women and racial and sexual minorities. A complex web of approaches that draws on international, national, and local laws and government, as well as the participation of community groups, stands the only chance of substantially …