Law Commons^™

Adjudicating Risk: Aids, Crime, And Culpability, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

The AIDS epidemic continues to pose significant public health challenges, especially given that the spread of the virus outpaces the AIDS response.¹ Importantly, HIV continues to disproportionately impact socially and economically marginalized communities. In countries with concentrated epidemics,² it is racial minorities, sex workers, men who have sex with men, and drug users who face the brunt of the epidemic.³ In the United States, the data is startling⁴ : 44% of new infections were among African-Americans, and among African-Americans contracting HIV, 57% were among gay and bisexual men.⁵ In 2016, the CDC found that one …

Law And Politics, An Emerging Epidemic: A Call For Evidence-Based Public Health Law, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

As Jacobson v. Massachusetts recognized in 1905, the basis of public health law, and its ability to limit constitutional rights, is the use of scientific data and empirical evidence. Far too often, this important fact is lost. Fear, misinformation, and politics frequently take center stage and drive the implementation of public health law. In the recent Ebola scare, political leaders passed unnecessary and unconstitutional quarantine measures that defied scientific understanding of the disease and caused many to have their rights needlessly constrained. Looking at HIV criminalization and exemptions to childhood vaccine requirements, it becomes clear that the blame cannot be …

Trafficked? Aids, Criminal Law And The Politics Of Measurement, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

Since early in the HIV epidemic, epidemiologists identified individuals who transact sex as a high-risk group for contracting HIV. Where the issue of transacting sex has been framed as sex work, harm-reduction advocates and scholars call for decriminalization as a primary legal solution to address HIV. Where the issue is defined as trafficking, advocates known as abolitionists argue instead for the criminalization of the purchase of sex.

Global health governance institutions are porous to these competing ideas and ideologies. This article first historicizes the contestation between harm-reduction and abolition in global governance on health. The paper then turns to a …

“Rugged Vaginas” And “Vulnerable Rectums”: The Sexual Identity, Epidemiology, And Law Of The Global Hiv Epidemic, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

AIDS remains amongst the leading causes of death globally. Identity is the primary mode of understanding HIV and organizing in response to the HIV epidemic. In this Article, I examine how epidemiology and human rights activism co-produce ideas of identity and risk. I call this the "identity/risk narrative ": the commonsense understanding about an identity group's HIV risk. For example, epidemiology offers the biological narrative of risk: anal sex and the weak rectal lining make men who have sex with men more vulnerable to HIV; while the fragility of a woman's vaginal wall provides a biological foundation for women's vulnerability. …

Manipulating Fate: Medical Innovations, Ethical Implications, Theatrical Illuminations, Karen H. Rothenberg, Lynn W. Bush

Faculty Scholarship

Transformative innovations in medicine and their ethical complexities create frequent confusion and misinterpretation that color the imagination. Placed in historical context, theatre provides a framework to reflect upon how the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies evolve over time and how attempts to control fate through medical science have shaped -- and been shaped by -- personal and professional relationships. The drama of these human interactions is powerful and has the potential to generate fear, create hope, transform identity, and inspire empathy -- a vivid source to observe the complex implications of translating research into clinical practice through …

“We Have The Right Not To Be Rescued...”: When Anti-Trafficking Programmes Undermine The Health And Well-Being Of Sex Workers, Aziza Ahmed, Meena Seshu

Faculty Scholarship

This paper highlights the impact of raid, rescue, and rehabilitation schemes on HIV programmes. It uses a case study of Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP), a sex workers collective in Sangli, India, to explore the impact of anti-trafficking efforts on HIV prevention programmes. The paper begins with an overview of the anti-trafficking movement emerging out of the United States. This U.S. based antitrafficking movement works in partnership with domestic Indian antitrafficking organisations to raid brothels to “rescue and rehabilitate” sex workers. Contrary to the purported goal of assisting women, the anti-trafficking projects that employ a raid, rescue, and rehabilitate model …

Feminism, Power, And Sex Work In The Context Of Hiv/Aids: Consequences For Women's Health, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the involvement of feminists in approaches to sex work in the context of HIV/AIDS. The paper focuses on two moments where feminist disagreement produced results in favor of an "anti-trafficking" approach to addressing the vulnerability of sex workers in the context of HIV. The first is the UNAIDS Guidance Note on Sex Work and the second is the "anti-prostitution pledge" found in the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. This article also examines the anti-sex work position articulated by abolitionist feminists and demonstrates the unintended consequences of the abolitionist position on women's health. By examining the actual …

Protecting Hiv Positive Women’S Human’S Rights: Recommendations For The Obama Administration, Aziza Ahmed, Catherine Hanssens, Brook Kelly

Faculty Scholarship

To bring the United States in line with prevailing human rights standards, its National HIV/AIDS Strategy will need to explicitly commit to a human rights framework when developing programmes and policies that serve the unaddressed needs of women. This paper focuses on two aspects of the institutionalized mistreatment of people with HIV: 1) the criminalization of their consensual sexual conduct; and 2) the elimination of informed and documented consensual participation in their diagnosis through reliance on mandatory and opt-out testing policies. More than half of US states have HIV-specific laws criminalizing the consensual sexual activity of people with HIV, regardless …

Medical Treatment Of Children With Hiv Illness And The Need For Supportive Intervention: The Challenges Of Medical Providers, Families And The State, Deborah J. Weimer

Faculty Scholarship

Human iummuno-deficiency virus (HIV) illness in children poses tremendous challenges to medical providers and families to work together to deliver optimal care. An alternative to filing "neglect" reports with the Department of Social Services is necessary to provide support and appropriate intervention to families and medical providers caring for HIV-positive children.

The creation of a neutral entity that could intervene and identify barriers to treatment and communication between the medical providers and the family would benefit all the parties involved. Knowledgeable mediators could help facilitate communication and identify appropriate support for the child and family.

Intervention would not be delayed …

Social Risk And The Transformation Of Public Health Law: Lessons From The Plague Years, Elizabeth B. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was the wake-up call that disturbed America from its mid-twentieth century slumber concerning the dangers of communicable diseases. Until AIDS was identified in 1981, most Americans felt largely impervious to health threats posed by viruses or bacteria. Polio, smallpox, and tuberculosis had been brought under control by the "magic bullets" of antibiotics and vaccines." We felt more susceptible to the ravages of cancer or the debilitation of heart disease. But, over the last twenty years, the (re)emergence of serious or life-threatening microbial- based conditions such as Ebola, hantavirus, Lyme disease, West Nile virus, and even …

Testing For Genetic Traits: The Need For A New Legal Doctrine Of Informed Consent , Elizabeth B. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

Innovative medical technology has made it possible to test whether you are at increased risk for certain types of cancer. The mere processing of a vial of blood can reveal whether you have a genetic predisposition to develop breast, ovarian, or prostate cancer, or other life-threatening conditions. The Human Genome Project, an international endeavor seeking to map our genetic structures, has facilitated this increasing ability to test for genetic flaws. It is expected that as the human genetic map is filled in, and as flaws in our fundamental building blocks are identified, there will be a concomitant drive to test …

Why Mandatory Hiv Testing Of Pregnant Women And Newborns Must Fail: A Legal, Historical, And Public Policy Analysis Special Issue: Mandatory Hiv Testing Of Newborns And Their Mothers, Elizabeth B. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

The debate surrounding mandatory HIV testing of newborns and pregnant women requires an understanding of the historical context of women in the epidemic. Although the epidemic first was recognized in gay men in 1981, anecdotal reports reveal that women already were dying from what seems to have been HIV-related symptomatology. Indeed, in Gena Corea's book, The Invisible Epidemic, we learn that, as early as 1981, not insignificant numbers of drug-using and former drug-using women were falling ill and not recovering from conditions that normally are not fatal, including bacterial pneumonia. Yet, because we did not necessarily expect these populations to …

Reproduction And Parenting, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond Parens Patriae: Assuring Timely, Informed, Compassionate Decicisionmaking For Hiv-Positive Children In Foster Care, Deborah J. Weimer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Women And Aids - Racism, Sexism, And Classism, Taunya L. Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Equitable Access To Biomedical Advances: Getting Beyond The Rights Impasse, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

In 1988, gay rights activists and supporters demonstrated outside a Food and Drug Administration building demanding unrestricted access to experimental drugs being tested for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus ("HIV") infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome ("AIDS").² Across the ocean in France, in October of the same year, came an equally insistent demand from women's groups, scientists, and family planning agencies that the pharmaceutical company Groupe Roussel Uclaf put its abortifacient RU 486 back on the market.' Early in 1989, people were outraged when newspapers reported that New Hampshire's Medicaid program would not pay for a life-saving bone marrow …

Aids And Government: A Plan Of Action, Taunya L. Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Aids, Astrology, And Arline: Towards A Causal Interpretation Of Section 504, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 provides that ‘[n]o otherwise qualified individual with handicaps shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under [any federal or federally funded program].’1 In School Board v. Arline,2 the Supreme Court held that a school teacher with a history of infectious tuberculosis was an ‘individual with handicaps' protected by section 504,3 and that the determination of whether she was ‘otherwise qualified’ to teach elementary school required a sound medical assessment of the risks …

Aids And The Right To Health Care, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Getting To Market: The Scientific And Legal Climate For Developing An Aids Vaccine, Wendy K. Mariner, Robert C. Gallo

Faculty Scholarship

Expectations of a vaccine to prevent acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) are rising. Not only are the prospects for an effective immunogen improving, but immunization appears to hold the greatest promise for halting the spread of infection and disease.' Identification of the causal agent-the retrovirus called HTLV-III, LAV, or generically, HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)-has provided the direction and limited the options for containing the disease.

Prevention is, of course, critical where the disease must be presumed to be fatal in all cases. Although there is no clear evidence that any single exposure to HIV will result in infection or disease, prudence …

The Right To Medical Treatment, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Aids Law: Impact Of Aids On American Schools And Prisons, The , Elizabeth B. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

The American public largely has responded with fear and hostility rather than with knowledge and compassion to the presence of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome ("AIDS") in society. Although our reactions are changing as we learn more about the syndrome and its causitive virus, some people continue to characterize AIDS as a well-deserved punishment of those groups most often afflicted with AIDS: gay men and intravenous drug users. Many people also persist in their erroneous beliefs that AIDS can be spread through casual contact. Although much remains to be learned about AIDS, there already exists an abundance of information upon which …