Health Law and Policy Commons^™

The Case Against Tax Incentives For Organ Transfers, Lisa Milot

Scholarly Works

Each year some 6,700 Americans die while awaiting an organ transplant. On its face, this fact seems almost inconsequential, representing less than 3% of American deaths annually. However, for the nearly 100,000 patients on the transplant wait list (and their families), nothing could be more consequential. What is more, the demand for transplantable organs is sure to rise as (1) more diseases become subject to prevention or cure, making organ failure the first sign of medical problems; (2) the success rate for transplants increases, leading to wider use; and (3) barriers to inclusion on the wait list are removed.

In …

Remembrance Of Lives Past: The Challenge Of Addressing Epigenetic Risk In Society, Fazal Khan

Popular Media

Do our ancestors’ experiences from several generations ago play a role in our current health? Could a famine or a period of food abundance experienced by our grandfathers affect whether we are currently obese or likely to develop diabetes? Can being the grandchildren of those who suffered through genocide or intense racial discrimination affect levels of certain chemicals in our brains even if we are not exposed to the same social stresses? In other words, do we biologically inherit the “memories” of past generations independent of changes to our ancestors’ genetic code or DNA? Assistant Professor Fazal Khan explores how …

Public Health Law For A Brave New World; Book Review: Lawrence O. Gostin, Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard

Scholarly Works

This is book review of Lawrence O. Gostin's new edition of Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2d ed., 2008). A review of a second edition of a book may be somewhat unusual as subsequent editions of already published works typically do not break new ground. But this book is different. Gostin's first edition, published in 2000, established and defined the modern field of public health law. The revised and expanded second edition emerges in the post-9/11, post-Katrina, post-Bush world. Gostin now seeks to apply public health paradigms to social problems beyond the field's …