Medical Jurisprudence Commons^™

Avoiding Prolonged Dementia, Norman L. Cantor

Norman Cantor

Amicus Brief, Lebron V. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, Neil Vidmar, Tom Baker, Ralph L. Brill, Martha Chamallas, Stephen Daniels, Thomas A. Eaton, Theodore Eisenberg, Neal R. Feigenson, Lucinda M. Finley, Marc Galanter, Valerie P. Hans, Michael Heise, Edward J. Kionka, Thomas H. Koenig, Herbert M. Kritzer, David I. Levine, Nancy S. Marder, Joanne Martin, Frank M. Mcclellan, Deborah Jones Merritt, Philip G. Peters, Jr., James T. Richardson, Charles Silver, Richard W. Wright

Nancy S. Marder

Illinois Public Act 82-280, § 2-1706.5, as amended by P.A. 94-677, § 330 (eff. Aug. 25, 2005), and as codified as 735 ILCS 5/2-1706.5(a), imposes a $500,000 “cap” on the noneconomic damages that may be awarded in a medical malpractice suit against a physician or other health care professional, and a $1 million “cap” on the noneconomic damages that may be awarded against a hospital, its affiliates, or their employees.

This brief will address two of the questions presented for review by the parties:

1. Does the cap violate the Illinois Constitution’s prohibition on “special ...

Crispr/Cas-9 Technologies: A Call For A New Form Of Tort, Kendall Lovell

San Diego International Law Journal

Once relegated to the domains of science fiction, modern day scientists and researchers are poised on the precipice of making genome editing clinically available. Once introduced into a clinical setting the effects of an off-target mutation or germline edit will remain largely unknown until health issues arise later in life or in the following generation. The novelty of the injuries that will arise require a system that is able to balance the interests of physicians with single and multi-generational plaintiffs, while providing a realistic framework for courts to follow. This comment offers a brand-new context that accounts for these needs ...

Beyond Gift And Bargain: Some Suggestions For Increasing Kidney Exchanges, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

Each year, thousands of people in the United States die from end stage renal disease (ESRD), despite the fact that we have the medical knowledge necessary to save them. The reason is simple: these people need a kidney transplant and we have too few kidneys. Given our current technology, the only way to meet the massive annual shortfall between the number of kidneys that are donated and the number of kidneys that are necessary to save the lives of those with ESRD is to increase the number of living donations. The debate on how to do so has often pitted ...

The Burgeoning “Biorights Movement”: Its Legal Basis, What’S At Stake, And How To Respond, Mark A. Hayden

Boston College Law Review

The advent of genetic and genomic technologies has the power to transform the understanding, prevention, and treatment of disease on a scale unprecedented in modern medicine. The promise of the era of precision medicine risks being tempered by the emergence of what is increasingly being referred to as the “biorights movement.” Of particular concern is the growing trend of individuals refusing to contribute their biological material to research studies absent some form of monetary compensation. Recently announced, but yet to be implemented, regulations seek to mitigate some of the potentially harmful and progress-impeding positions advanced by the biorights movement. The ...

Termination Of Hospital Medical Staff Privileges For Economic Reasons: An Appeal For Consistency, June D. Zellers, Michael R. Poulin

Maine Law Review

The relationship between physicians and hospitals is undergoing significant change. Historically, a physician maintained a private practice in the community and looked to the local hospital for ancillary support when his or her patients were too ill to remain at home. This community-based physician gained access to the hospital by obtaining medical staff privileges. These privileges allowed the physician to admit patients to the hospital, treat patients while they were there, and use the hospital's staff and equipment. The physician generally enjoyed the use of the privileges throughout his or her active career, losing them only if found incompetent ...

A Surging Drug Epidemic: Time For Congress To Enact A Mandate On Insurance Companies And Rehabilitation Facilities For Opioid And Opiate Addiction, Alanna Guy

Journal of Law and Health

This Note begins with a discussion of both the national opioid problem as well as the specific epidemic in Ohio as an example of how it has grown within all of the states. Part II discusses the differences between prescription opioids and opiates, how they can be obtained, what effects they have on the human body, and why the government has an interest in this growing problem. Next, this Note explains how and why there was an increase in access and addiction to prescription opioid pain medication. Following this explanation, the steps the government has taken to try to rectify ...

Reforming Regenerative Medicine Regulation, Sarah Duranske

Georgia State University Law Review

Regenerative medicine is defined as the branch of medicine that develops methods to regrow, repair, or replace damaged or diseased cells or tissues. It includes a variety of approaches, such as transplanting cells to promote healing, editing genes in cells to attack cancer, and even building organs from biological materials. Regulating regenerative medicine therapies is no easy task. Finding a balance between competing interests–enabling timely access for needy patients while simultaneously ensuring a positive benefit/risk profile and promoting the development of beneficial innovations–is hard enough at any given point in time. But add in constantly advancing scientific ...

Accelerated Creative Problem Solving And Product Improvement Applied To Experimental Devices In A Bloodstain Pattern Interpretation Class--Improving The Role Of Insight Development Tools As A Generator Of New Ideas In Novel Situations, Douglas Ridolfi

Creative Studies Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project uses an action research centered study protocol to examine the effects of a problem-based learning exercise related to bloodstain pattern interpretation in a crime scene processing and general criminalistics class taught as part of an upper division forensic chemistry major in a four year college. The goal is to apply design principles and creative problem solving methods directly adapted to a project involving interpreting a set of crime scene photographs depicting blood spatter and with the aid of guided exercises in ideation and design, lead students into the development of alternate theories of how the bloodstains were created ...

Informing Consent: Medical Malpractice And The Criminalization Of Pregnancy, Laura Beth Cohen

Michigan Law Review

Since the early 1990s, jurisdictions around the country have been using civil child abuse laws to penalize women for using illicit drugs during their pregnancies. Using civil child abuse laws in this way infringes on pregnant women’s civil rights and deters them from seeking prenatal care. Child Protective Services agencies are key players in this system. Women often become entangled with the Child Protective Services system through their health care providers. Providers will drug test pregnant women without first alerting them to the potential negative consequences stemming from a positive drug test. Doing so is a breach of these ...

A Job For Congress: Medical Marijuana Patients’ Fight For Second Amendment Rights, Kenneth Seligson

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Note begins with Part I section (A), describing the administrative rule and factual background, leading up to the suit in Wilson v. Lynch. Part I section (B) explains the arguments made at the U.S. District Court in Nevada and how the case progressed from the district court to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Then, Part I section (C) analyzes the Ninth Circuit’s application of the two-step test for Second Amendment challenges established in Chovan.

After evaluating the application of the two-step test in Wilson v. Lynch, Part II section (A) reviews the history of cannabis and ...

Maine Physician Practice Guidelines: Implications For Medical Malpractice Litigation, Jennifer S. Begel

Maine Law Review

This Article assesses the use of physician practice guidelines as a vehicle for medical malpractice tort reform and focuses upon the State of Maine's legislation incorporating physician practice parameters into the defense of medical malpractice litigation. The Maine Medical Liability Demonstration Project (the “Demonstration Project”) legislatively adopts practice guidelines in four different medical specialties and allows physicians in those specialties to assert compliance with the applicable guideline as an affirmative defense. The affirmative defense of compliance with such guidelines has been touted as a means of protecting physicians from, and decreasing the costs associated with, medical malpractice litigation. While ...

Marijuana Agriculture Law: Regulation At The Root Of An Industry, Ryan Stoa

Ryan B. Stoa

Marijuana legalization is sweeping the nation. Recreational marijuana use is legal in eight states. Medical marijuana use is legal in thirteen states. Only three states maintain an absolute criminal prohibition on marijuana use. Many of these legalization initiatives propose to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol, and many titles are variations of the "Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act." For political and public health reasons the analogy makes sense, but it also reveals a regulatory blind spot. States may be using alcohol as a model for regulating the distribution, retail, and consumption of marijuana, but marijuana is much more ...

Trading Safety For Innovation And Access: An Empirical Evaluation Of The Fda’S Premarket Approval Process

BYU Law Review

Congress created the premarket approval process (PMA) to provide a rigorous safety evaluation of high-risk medical devices before they may be sold on the U.S. market. Evaluating a PMA application requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct a lengthy, complex, and costly assessment of the extensive data a manufacturer must submit. But other policy concerns, notably a fear of hampering innovation and a desire to assure timely access to new technologies, have led Congress to relax some of the rigorous data requirements the PMA process imposes on manufacturers. Congress mandates that the FDA employ the “least burdensome ...

The Role Of International Human Rights Law In Mediating Between The Rights Of Parents And Their Children Born With Intersex Traits In The United States, Cristian González Cabrera

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Taxing & Zapping Marijuana: Blockchain Compliance In The Trump Administration, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

On January 4, 2018, the Trump Administration through Attorney General Sessions rescinded an Obama-era policy that discouraged federal prosecutors from bringing charges in all but the most serious marijuana cases under the federal Controlled Substances Act, as well as under the Bank Secrecy Act. Federal law is at odds with state law in the majority of states on the legalization and subsequent state taxation of marijuana. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have at least partially legalized marijuana. Eight of these states have legalized both medicinal and recreational use. With limited exceptions, legalized sales of marijuana are taxed.

Aside ...

Modernizing The Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act To Harmonize With The Affordable Care Act To Improve Equality, Quality And Cost Of Emergency Care, Katharine A. Van Tassel

Katharine Van Tassel

This Article will propose a very simple, two-step way to modernize EMTALA [Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (1986)] to deal with this cascade of problems. This solution converts EMTALA into a powerful tool to enhance equal access to healthcare while at the same time changing EMTALA so that it works in tandem with, instead of against, the efforts of the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid to improve healthcare quality, cost and equal access.

This solution also works across systems to resolve the conflict between the tort, licensure and hospital peer review systems that all discourage evidence-based treatment ...

Blacklisted: The Constitutionality Of The Federal System For Publishing Reports Of "Bad" Doctors In The National Practitioner Data Bank, Katharine Van Tassel

Katharine Van Tassel

In order to highlight the problems with the NPDB [National Practitioner Data Bank], this Article compares physician blacklisting with other forms of blacklisting. For example, both physician and sexual predator blacklisting programs have the same goals: allowing the public to engage in self-protection by preventing “predators” from traveling to new locations to prey on a new group of unsuspecting victims. And both sexual predators and physicians suffer similar stigmatization as the result of the “badge of infamy” that comes with being blacklisted. But this is where the similarities end. Accused sex offenders get all of the trappings of due process ...

Hospital Peer Review Standards And Due Process: Moving From Tort Doctrine Toward Contract Principles Based On Clinical Practice Guidelines, Katharine A. Van Tassel

Katharine Van Tassel

This Article proposes a solution to the problems associated with the current use of vague standards in peer review. This Article will examine the proposal that medical staffs switch from ad hoc judicial decision-making to rule-making. This switch will allow medical staffs to abandon the troublesome practice of applying vague 'standard of care' measures ex post facto. In its stead, express contractual terminology could be adopted, such as 'expectations of performance,' which incorporates specifically chosen and uniquely tailored clinical practice guidelines ('CPGs') directly into the medical staff by-laws. Describing the expectations of physician performance in express contractual terms enables physicians ...

Regulating In Uncertainty: Animating The Public Health Product Safety Net To Capture Consumer Products Regulated By The Fda That Use Innovative Technologies, Including Nanotechnologies, Genetic Modification, Cloning, And Lab Grown Meat, Katharine A. Van Tassel

Katharine Van Tassel

This Article will use nanotechnology as an example that highlights how regulation based on novelty rather than hazard achieves the proper balance between protecting public health while encouraging innovation through the animation of the public health product safety net. In Part II, this Article starts by explaining what nanotechnology is and the remarkable growth of its use in everyday consumer products. It then summarizes the steadily increasing number of studies that suggest that there are likely to be serious health risks associated with the use of nanotech consumer products. Next, it explains how the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] is ...