Digital Commons Network^™

Serving Up Allergy Labeling: Mitigating Food Allergen Risks In Restaurants, Marie C. Boyd

Faculty Publications

Allergens in restaurant food cause many allergic reactions and deaths. Yet no federal, state, or local law adequately protects people from these harms. Although federal law requires the labeling of “major food allergens” in packaged food, there are no allergen labeling requirements for restaurant-type food. In addition, existing food safety requirements for restaurants are inadequate to prevent allergen cross contact.

The existing legal scholarship on food allergens in restaurants is limited. Much of the legal scholarship on labeling in restaurants focuses on menu labeling — the provision of calorie and other nutrition information to combat obesity. The requirements of Section …

The Moderating Relationship Of Comorbid Psychopathology And Treatment Outcome For Young Adult Offenders In Drug Court, Patrick Mcgonigal, Kathleen A. Moore, Matthew Scott Young

Mental Health Law & Policy Faculty Publications

Title: The moderating relationship of comorbid psychopathology and treatment outcome for young adult offenders in drug court.

Background: The drug court system is an alternative to incarceration that provides offenders with non-violent, substance motivated crimes with an opportunity to dismiss their charges and undergo a rigorous substance abuse treatment program. It is unknown whether drug court is effective for young adult clients and the role of co-occurring psychopathology within this context.

Methods: This study evaluated the overall effectiveness of a drug court system applied to young adult offenders ages 18-26, and additionally explored the moderating relationship of psychiatric symptoms on …

Moral Evils V Health And Safety Evils: The Case Of An Ovum “Obtained” From A “Donor” And Used By The “Donor” In Her Own Surrogate Pregnancy, Pamela M. White

Canadian Journal of Family Law

This paper critically examines the amendment made in 2012 to section 10(2)(c) of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, 2004 mandating the screening and testing of “obtained” ovum “donated” by a “donor” and used in her own surrogate pregnancy. The amendment at section 10(1) of the Act cites the federal government’s obligation to reduce harm to human health and safety arising from use of sperm or ova for human reproduction, including the risk of disease transmission. This paper argues that the amendment mandating the screening and testing of surrogate ova when used by the surrogate in her own surrogate pregnancy creates …

Three Lost Ebola Facts And Public Health Legal Preparedness, Robert Gatter

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Three key facts about Ebola Transmission should drive policy designed to control the risk of transmission during a crisis.

• Ebola—like HIV—is not easily transmissible human-to-human.
• Ebola has “dry” and “wet” symptoms, and only the wet symptoms threaten public health.
• A fever is Ebola’s canary in a coal mine; it provides timely warning of a coming threat.

Yet, during the U.S. Ebola scare in 2014, these three facts were lost. Unnecessary quarantine, stigma, and burden on those exposed to Ebola resulted, including especially for those who volunteered to fight the disease at its source abroad. Tragically, the law permitted these injustices …

The Opioid Epidemic And Rural American: Why The Usda Should Lead The Response, Lexy Gross

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

The International Right To Health Care: A Legal And Moral Defense, Michael Da Silva

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the following, I outline the case against the international right to health care and explain why recognition of such a right is still necessary. The argument is explicitly limited to international human rights law and is primarily descriptive in nature, but I go on to explain the moral reasons to accept this account. Both the positive law and moral reasoning could be used in other health rights debates, but I do not attempt to make such claims here.

The structure of my work is as follows. I first outline three problems with recognizing an international right to health care. …

Disproportionate Realities: The Climate Justice Implications Of Mitigation Policies Across Scales, Tinuviel Carlson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Global climate change will have disproportionate effects on low-income and minority communities around the world producing important justice challenges. As national governments increasingly rely on local governments, civil society, and private transnational actors to establish and implement climate actions policies, it is important to assess whether and how these newly emergent actors can address these justice challenges. First this thesis examines concepts of justice in relation to climate change across different scales in order to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework of climate justice. This conceptual framework expands the scale of the international climate justice movement address local concerns. Further, the …

A Comparative Study Of The Law Of Dismissal In The U.S. And China, Zhenxing Ke

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The Labor Law in China, enacted in 1994, was the first statute in China to stipulate dismissal protections. The Employment Contract Law, a more recent law that went into effect in January 2008, strengthened Chinese dismissal protections. For example, in the summary termination about the misconduct, this law only allows six instances for termination, and if a misconduct committed by an employee is not covered in these six instances, it is hard for an employer to discharge this employee legally.

In contrast, America has a more flexible employment law. In America, the doctrine of dismissal is dominated by the …

Witch Doctors, Zombies, And Oracles: Rethinking Health In America, Ali S. Khan

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

To the extent we can even refer to an American healthcare "system," it functions brilliantly ... to make money. The system is designed to reward executives or major shareholders of pharmaceutical & health insurance companies, healthcare facilities, and related entities. With a rapidly aging population, healthcare will soon surpass a fifth of our economy. Of course, the American healthcare system does not function brilliantly when one considers the perspective of patients and over-extended primary care providers. Prices are growing faster than inflation or wages, healthcare is twice as costly as other comparable nations, and one third is a result of …

Caged In: The Devastating Harms Of Solitary Confinement On Prisoners With Physical Disabilities, Jamelia Morgan

Faculty Articles and Papers

This article draws from interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated people with disabilities, disability rights advocates, prisoners' rights advocates, medical experts, legal scholars, and correctional officials, and examines the conditions of confinement, harms, and challenges facing prisoners with physical disabilities in solitary confinement. In addition, this article fills some of the gaps in data and where possible builds on existing data to provide a snapshot into (1) the number of people with physical disabilities; (2) the number of prisoners with physical disabilities in solitary confinement; and (3) the volume of grievances filed by prisoners with disabilities in ten state prison …

The Fda's Priority Review Voucher Program's Role In Bringing Benznidazle To Chagas Disease Patients In The United States, Lisa Cline

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Choosing Medical Malpractice, Nadia N. Sawicki

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Modern principles of patient autonomy and health care consumerism are at odds with medical malpractice law's traditional skepticism towards the defenses of contractual waiver and assumption of risk. Many American courts follow a patient-protective view, exemplified by the reasoning in the seminal Tunkl case, rejecting any attempts by physicians to relieve themselves of liability on the grounds of a patient's agreement to assume the risk of malpractice. However, where patients pursue unconventional treatments that satisfy their personal preferences but that arguably fall outside the standard of care, courts have good reason to be more receptive to such defenses. This Article …

Would Hamsterdam Work - Drug Depenalization In The Wire And In Real Life, John Bronsteen

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The television show The Wire depicts a plan called “Hamsterdam” in which police let people sell drugs in isolated places, and only those places, without fear of arrest. Based on limited but decent empirical evidence, we can make educated guesses about what would happen if that were tried in real life. Indeed, Swiss police tried something remarkably similar in the 1980s. More generally, the results of various forms of drug legalization, depenalization, and decriminalization in Europe--such as in Portugal, which has transferred the state's method of dealing with drug use (including heroin and cocaine) from the criminal justice system to …

Public Health Preparedness & Response: An Exercise In Administrative Law, John D. Blum, Jordan Paradise

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Responses to epidemics, pandemics, and other biological disasters require multiple coordinated initiatives that combine sophisticated planning, sound emergency management, effective stockpiles, solid geographic information systems, well-developed laboratory surveillance and response, and effective management capabilities. Critical to the noted elements of planning and response is the existence of a legal structure, which underpins the operations of necessary programs. While the law may not be the first public health tool considered in a disaster, it is fundamental to the effective functioning of multiple actors and must be harmonized across jurisdictional lines. This article explores the role of law in pandemics and other …

Hiv Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis: Are We “Preping” For A New Epidemic?, Christopher Disanto

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Public Health And Sterilization Of The Mentally Disabled: Under What Circumstances Should It Be Scrutinized Versus Granted By Court Order?, Devin Griffin

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Genetic Information Discrimination In Public Schools: A Common-Sense Exception, Tyler Wood

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

Volk V. Demeerleer Study, Patricia C. Kuszler, Terry J. Price, University Of Washington School Of Law, Center For Law, Science And Global Health

Center for Law in Science & Global Health

The University of Washington School of Law Center for Law, Science and Global Health was asked to “convene a study on the Washington State Supreme Court decision Volk v. DeMeerleer, 386 P.3d 254 (Wash. 2016).” The Volk case elaborated on the duty of mental health providers to protect foreseeable victims of a dangerous patient. The goal of the study was to evaluate whether or not this case “substantially changed the law [in Washington] on the duty of care owed to third parties by mental health providers and whether it has had an impact on access to mental health services …

Strategies To Combat Antibiotic Resistance, Amit Singhai

Student Works

No abstract provided.

You Be The Judge: The Wholesale Implementation Of Bail Schedules By The Judiciary As An Abdication Of Adjudicatory Responsibility Creating A Disparate Impact For African-Americans And Hispanics Accused Of A Criminal Offense, Taurus Myhand

Scholarly Works

The presumption of innocence is not well illustrated in the age-old and widespread use of monetary bail systems by most jurisdictions throughout the United States. In fact, whether a person is detained in jails prior to the final disposition of the case, is not likely to be dependent on the strength of the government’s case toward proving the accusee’s guilt. Rather, pre-trial detention is much more dependent on whether the accusee has the means to pay an amount of money determined by a court.

As the calls for bail reform resurges, many legal professionals are looking for alternatives to monetary …

The Uneasy Case For Patent Law, Rachel E. Sachs

Michigan Law Review

A central tenet of patent law scholarship holds that if any scientific field truly needs patents to stimulate progress, it is pharmaceuticals. Patents are thought to be critical in encouraging pharmaceutical companies to develop and commercialize new therapies, due to the high costs of researching diseases, developing treatments, and bringing drugs through the complex, expensive approval process. Scholars and policymakers often point to patent law’s apparent success in the pharmaceutical industry to justify broader calls for more expansive patent rights.

This Article challenges this conventional wisdom about the centrality of patents to drug development by presenting a case study of …

Microgrids And Resilience To Climate-Driven Impacts On Public Health, Justin Gundlach

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

“Resilience” has burst into the lexicons of several policy areas in recent years, owing in no small part to climate change’s amplification of extreme events that severely disrupt the operation of natural, social, and engineered systems. Fostering resilience means anticipating severe disruptions and planning, investing, and designing so that such disruptions, which are certain to occur, are made shallower in depth and shorter in duration. Thus a resilient system or community can continue functioning despite disruptive events, return more swiftly to routine function following disruption, and incorporate new information so as to improve operations in extremis and speed future restorations. …

Researching Colorado Health Law, Kerri Rowe

Publications

No abstract provided.

Data Collection, Ehrs, And Poverty Determinations, Craig Konnoth

Publications

Collecting and deploying poverty-related data is an important starting point for leveraging data regarding social determinants of health in precision medicine. However, we must rethink how we collect and deploy such data. Current modes of collection yield imprecise data that is unsuited for research. Better data can be collected by cross-referencing other sources such as employers and public benefit programs, and by incentivizing and encouraging patients and providers to provide more accurate information. Data thus collected can be used to provide appropriate individual-level clinical and non-clinical care, and to systematically determine what share of social resources healthcare should consume.

Women Of Color And Health: Issues And Solutions, June Cross, Nia Weeks, Kristen Underhill, Chloe Bootstaylor

Faculty Scholarship

Chloe Bootstaylor: Welcome to our second panel. This panel focuses on women of color in health, issues, and solutions. The session is inspired by Professor June Cross of the Columbia School of Journalism and her recent film, Wilhemina’s War, which follows the story of Wilhemina Dixon and depicts the obstacles that Americans with HIV/AIDS face in accessing not only adequate healthcare but also financial, infrastructural, and social support in their communities.

This panel will consist of Professor Underhill and Nia Weeks. June Cross will join us a little later on. We will start with a clip from her film, …

Ip Preparedness For Outbreak Diseases, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

Outbreaks of infectious diseases will worsen, as illustrated by the recent back-to-back Ebola and Zika epidemics. The development of innovative drugs, especially in the form of vaccines, is key to minimizing future outbreaks, yet current intellectual property (IP) regimes are ineffective in supporting this goal.

IP scholarship has not adequately addressed the role of IP in the development of vaccines for outbreak diseases. This Article fills that void. Through case studies on the recent Ebola and Zika outbreaks, it provides the first descriptive analysis of the role of IP from the pre- to the post-outbreak stages, specifically identifying IP inefficiencies. …

Can Rationing Through Inconvenience Be Ethical?, Nir Eyal, Paul Romain, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we provide a comprehensive analysis and a normative assessment of rationing through inconvenience as a form of rationing. By “rationing through inconvenience” in the health sphere, we refer to a non-financial burden (the inconvenience) that is either intended to cause or has the effect of causing patients or clinicians to choose an option for health‐related consumption that is preferred by the health system for its fairness, efficiency, or other distributive desiderata beyond assisting the immediate patient. We argue that under certain conditions, rationing through inconvenience may turn out to serve as a legitimate and, compared to direct …

Using The Public Nuisance Doctrine To Combat Antibiotic Resistance, Amanda Purcell

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

America’S Relation To World Order: Two Indictments, Two Thought Experiments, And A Misquotation, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The State is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy owing to its inability to cope with novel problems of weapons proliferation, transnational threats including climate change, a fragile global financial infrastructure, cultural influences carried by electronic communications, and an undemocratic regime of human rights law. These fatal inadequacies are summoning forth a new constitutional order, the latest in a series of century-spanning archetypal regimes that have arisen since the Renaissance and the collapse of feudalism. A backlash against the harbingers of this new order, however, is crippling the development of those modes of action that are required to deal with the …

Rethinking Criminalization Of Hiv Exposure – Lessons From California’S New Legislation, Y. Tony Yang, Kristen Underhill

Faculty Scholarship

Laws that criminalize certain behaviors on the basis of the person’s HIV status have long been challenged as ineffective prevention measures that harm public health. They are nevertheless widespread: according to the Center for HIV Law and Policy, 34 states have HIV-specific criminal statutes, and 23 have applied more general laws (e.g., against assault with a deadly weapon) in order to criminalize HIV exposure. Most of these laws don’t reflect current evidence regarding protective factors such as antiretroviral treatment (ART), and many encompass behaviors that carry negligible risk.