Digital Commons Network^™

Human Rights And Maternal-Fetal Hiv Transmission Prevention Trials In Africa, George J. Annas, Michael A. Grodin

Faculty Scholarship

The human rights issues raised by the conduct of maternal-fetal human immunodeficiency virus transmission trials in Africa are not unique to either acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or Africa, but public discussion of these trials presents an opportunity for the United States and other wealthy nations to take the rights and welfare of impoverished populations seriously. The central issue at stake when developed countries perform research on subjects in developing countries is exploitation. The only way to prevent exploitation of a research population is to insist not only that informed consent be obtained but also that, should an intervention be proven beneficial, …

The Ban On Welfare For Felony Drug Offenders: Giving A New Meaning To 'Life Sentence', Cynthia Godsoe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And Health - The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights At 50, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

War, famine, pestilence, and poverty have had obvious and devastating effects on health throughout human history. In recent times, human rights have come to be viewed as essential to freedom and individual development. But it is only since the end of World War II that the link between human rights and these causes of disease and death has been recognized.1-3 The 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — signed on December 10, 1948 — provides an opportunity to review its genesis, to explore the contemporary link between health and human rights, and to develop effective human-rights …

Transgenic Agriculture: Biosafety And International Trade, Michael S. Baram, Calestuous Juma, Sheldon Krimsky, Rufus C. King

Faculty Scholarship

We stand at the threshold of a new century that will bring novel methods of producing foods, industrial materials, pharmaceuticals, and other products important to society and industry. Today's session will, therefore, address a subject of great importance: the introduction of genetically modified crops, livestock, micro-organisms, and other substances into agriculture and related fields, made possible by American and foreign corporate biotechnology.

Can Poverty Lawyers Play Well With Others? Including Lawyers In Integrated, School-Based Service Delivery Programs, Leigh S. Goodmark

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Restoring The Humanitarian Character Of U.S. Refugee Law: Lessons From The International Community, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

This response essay will first characterize UNHCR's role in the international protection of refugees, as a means of assessing the relevance of UNHCR's perspective to U.S. judicial decision-making in the area of asylum. The paper will then respond to each of the three problematic issues which Professor Fitzpatrick identifies in contemporary U.S. asylum law, by presenting, in each case, a broad proposition of international law which will then be substantiated with reference to relevant principles, guidelines and insights from the international refugee protection community of which UNHCR is a part. Finally, the essay's conclusion will offer a possible rationale for …

Pain Relief For The Dying: The Unwelcome Intervention Of The Criminal Law, Phebe Saunders Haugen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses physician-assisted suicide and the medical treatment of pain and suffering. Part II discusses various medical misconceptions about the treatment of pain and how modern medicine fails to fulfill this aspect of its palliative care role. Part III reviews how the law currently circumscribes the patient and doctor's ability to make medical decisions when the patient is terminally ill. As will be shown, the law is clearer and more respectful of good medical practice than most medical practitioners currently believe. Moreover, this section will also establish that, while several competing philosophical positions surrounding physician-assisted suicide exist, these same …

Neighborhood Legal Services As House Counsel To Community-Based Efforts To Achieve Economic Justice: The East Brooklyn Experience, Brian Glick

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Neighborhood Legal Services As House Counsel To Community-Based Efforts To Achieve Economic Justice: The East Brooklyn Experience, Martin S. Flaherty

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Aspects Of Physician-Assisted Suicide After Lee V. Oregon, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

On November 8, 1994, Oregon voters narrowly passed the highly controversial Death with Dignity Act (Measure 16), which marked the first time that physician-assisted suicide was explicitly legalized anywhere in the world. In Lee v. Oregon, a group of physicians, several terminally ill persons, a residential care facility, and individual operators of residential care facilities sought to enjoin enforcement of the new law, claiming various constitutional infirmities. The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon enjoined enforcement of the law, acknowledging that it raised important constitutional issues including possible violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of …

The Bell Tolls For A Constitutional Right To Physician-Assisted Suicide, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway's novel about the Spanish Civil War, ends with its American hero, Robert Jordan, mortally wounded and trying to decide whether to commit suicide with a machine gun or risk capture by trying to retain consciousness long enough to cover the retreat of his comrades. Confronting his impending death, Jordan thinks, “Dying is only bad when it takes a long time and hurts so much that it humiliates you.” Hemingway, one of the most American of American writers, committed suicide with a shotgun. Most suicides in the United States are committed with guns, but …

Lmo's: Treasure Chest Or Pandora's Box, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Biotechnology is beginning to trans- A form agriculture across the globe. After thousands of years of traditional plant and animal breeding, and centuries of mechanization and chemical application, genetic research has opened a Pandora's box of living modified organisms (LMOs) designed to improve the productivity and efficiency of commercial agriculture. A multitude of transgenic crops and animals is now being introduced into commerce by biotechnology companies, and b nations are puzzling out how to appropriate the benefits and manage the risks.

American biotechnology companies and agencies are the leading proponents of using LMOs. They claim that two decades of costly …

Mediating Bioethical Disputes, Diane E. Hoffmann, Naomi Karp

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Review Of Informal Agency Action On The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Apa: The Alleged Demise And Actual Status Of Overton Park's Requirement Of Judicial Review "On The Record", Gordon G. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Welfare Reform And Child Care: A Proposal For State Legislation, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

The shortage of subsidized child care creates three problems. First, it contributes to underemployment because job options are greatly reduced when child care is unavailable. Second, it erodes the wages of parents who do work because low-income families spend a debilitating percentage of their earnings to pay for the care of their children. Third, it relegates many children to poor quality child care settings, compromising their academic potential and social well-being, and placing them at risk for delinquency and dependency. Part I of this article discusses the current paucity of quality, affordable child care, and the effects of this shortage. …

From Expertise To Politics: The Transformation Of American Rulemaking, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

In this speech to be given on November 15, 1996, as the American contribution to the week-long conference on administrative law sponsored by the Fundaci6n Estudios de Derecho Administrativo in Caracas, Venezuela, Professor Peter L. Strauss addresses the history and developing political character of rulemaking in federal law over the fifty years since enactment of the Administrative Procedure Act. As a framework, Professor Strauss sets forth a hierarchy of institutional rulemaking, from constitution through informal advising. He then develops his discussion of rulemaking by tracing the federal process of rulemaking through time, beginning with the enactment of the Administrative Procedure …

Welfare Reform And Child Care: A Proposal For State Legislation, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Without subsidized child care, Dianne Williams, the mother of an eighteen-month-old son, would never have left welfare and earned the post-secondary degree that led to her current job as a senior secretary; Tammy Stinson, a U.S. Air Force veteran and 29-year-old mother of two children, would spend up to $150 of her weekly $200 salary on child care, increasing the likelihood she would turn to welfare or live in poverty; Jerry Andrews, a graduate of a government-funded early childhood education program, might not earn $31,200 a year and be working towards an engineering degree. These individuals are lucky. The vast …

Feminism, Law, And Bioethics, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Feminist legal theory provides a healthy skepticism toward legal doctrine and insists that we reexamine even formally gender-neutral rules to uncover problematic assumptions behind them. The article first outlines feminist legal theory from the perspectives of liberal, cultural, and radical feminism. Examples of how each theory influences legal practice, case law, and legislation are highlighted. Each perspective is then applied to a contemporary bioethical issue, egg donation. Following a brief discussion of the common themes shared by feminist jurisprudence, the article incorporates a narrative reflecting on the integration of the common feminist themes in the context of the passage of …

Comparative Risk Assessment In New York, Michael B. Gerrard, Deborah Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Comparative risk assessment (CRA) is the examination of the relative risks posed by different dangers, with a view to deciding which dangers deserve the most governmental attention. CRA frequently tries to reduce different problems to a common metric, usually the statistical lives saved by a program, so that apples can be weighed against oranges. This article will discuss and assess the growing use of CRA in New York State.

There are two principal arguments for the use of CRA in the environmental context. The first is that we do not have unlimited resources; we cannot move against all problems simultaneously. …

The Right To Die In America: Sloganeering From Quinlan And Cruzan To Quill And Kevorkian, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The topic of my talk is different from those you have been dealing with in this conference in one critical aspect-it's one that all of us are going to confront-we're all going to die. And death is not a subject anyone can escape because it has both professional implications-what the law should be, how we should decide disputes when they arise, and practical ones-how we should order our own lives, and what we should do to try to make our death easier if not on ourselves, at least on our loved ones.

The Promised End: Constitutional Aspects Of Physician-Assisted Suicide, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The debate over physician-assisted suicide has dramatically shifted to a discussion of constitutional issues. This spring, within a month of each other, U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals on both coasts ruled that state prohibitions of assisted suicide are unconstitutional when applied to physicians who prescribe lethal medication for terminally ill, competent adults who wish to end their lives. The Ninth Circuit includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, and the Second Circuit includes New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. Both courts reached the same conclusion but for different legal reasons.

Medicine And Human Rights: Reflections On The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Doctors’ Trial, George J. Annas, Michael A. Grodin

Faculty Scholarship

1996 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the commencement of the trial of Nazi physicians at Nuremberg, a trial that has been variously designated as the "Doctors' Trial" and the "Medical Case." In addition to documenting atrocities committed by physicians and scientists during WWII, the most significant contribution of the trial has come to be known as the "Nuremberg Code," a judicial codification of 10 prerequisites for the moral and legal use of human beings in experiments. Anniversaries provide us with an opportunity to reflect upon the past, but they also ena ble us to renew our efforts to plan for …

The Promised End — Physician-Assisted Suicide And Abortion, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The debate over late term intact dilation and evacuation abortions (so-called "partial birth" abortions) has been an uncomfortable one for those in the pro-choice community.' Although the United States Senate narrowly refused to override President Clinton's veto of a bill criminalizing this procedure, many in Congress agreed with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) that it was "as close to infanticide as anything I have come upon." States have a compelling interest in preventing infanticide that is not contradicted by a woman's constitutional right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy. Similarly, states have a legitimate and perhaps even compelling interest …

Three-Branch Monte, Ashutosh Bhagwat

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Diversity And Bioactivity Of Marine Sponges Of The Caribbean: The Turks And Caicos Islands., Shirley A. Pomponi,, John K. Reed, Amy E. Wright, Peter J. Mccarthy

Faculty Scholarship

Sponges are among the most abundant groups of benthic marine invertebrates and are also known to produce a high diversity of bioactive compounds. As part of a research programme focusing on the discovery of marine natural products with therapeutic potential, we have studied 85 shallow and deep water habitats of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Approximately 500 samples of sponges were photodocumented, collected, taxonomically Identified, and biologically and chemically assayed. All classes of the Phylum Porifera and all orders of the Class Demosponglae were represented, although their relative abundance and diversity varied with depth. Nine percent of all sponges tested …

Nicotine Withdrawal: Assessing The Fda's Effort To Regulate Tobacco Products, Lars Noah, Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

At a press conference held on August 23, 1996, just one year after initially revealing his plans, President Clinton announced sweeping federal regulations to combat the underage use of tobacco products. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) subsequently published a lengthy preamble to accompany the final regulations, detailing the Agency's assessment of the problem and responding to numerous public comments to its notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). Characterizing the growing use of tobacco products as a "pediatric disease," FDA Commissioner David Kessler previously had vowed to alter the smoking habits of the newest generation of tobacco users in order to …

Foreword: A Recipe For Effecting Institutional Changes To Achieve Privatization, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Symposium A Recipe for Effecting Institutional Changes to Achieve Privatization

Of the many questions raised by privatization, this mini-conference will focus on the "how" in different countries: developed and developing, Western countries and the Eastern bloc (including China), emphasizing methodology and cultural traits. Clearly, the "how" will differ in fundamental aspects depending on the political and economic conditions of countries in which the process is taking place

The focus on the "how," however, does not mean that we will not consider other important questions that the movement to privatize raises. The papers presented in this mini-conference reflect a wide range …

Purification Of A Variant-Specific Surface Protein Of Giardia Lamblia And Characterization Of Its Metal-Binding Properties, Mark R. Chance

Faculty Scholarship

Giardia lamblia, an intestinal parasite of humans and other vertebrates, undergoes surface antigenic variation by modulating the expression of different variant-specific surface proteins (VSP). VSPs are cysteine-rich surface proteins that bind zinc and other heavy metals in vitro. We developed an immunoaffinity chromatographic method to purify a VSP in order to determine its biochemical properties. The sequences of two different proteolytic fragments agreed with the sequence deduced from the cloned gene, and amino-terminal sequence indicated the removal of a 14-residue signal peptide, consistent with the transport of VSP to the cell surface. The protein is not glycosylated and has an …

Parents As Fiduciaries, Elizabeth S. Scott, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, the law has deferred to the rights of biological parents in regulating the parent-child relationship. More recently, as the emphasis of legal regulation has shifted to protecting children's interests, critics have targeted the traditional focus on parents' rights as impeding the goal of promoting children's welfare. Some contemporary scholars argue instead for a "child-centered perspective," in contrast to the current regime under which biological parents continue to have important legal interests in their relationship with their children. The underlying assumption of this claim is that the rights of parents and the interests of children often are conflicting, and that …

Liberating Commercial Speech: Product Labeling Controls And The First Amendment, Lars Noah, Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

As federal regulators impose increasing limits on what manufacturers may say about their products, constitutional protections for commercial speech become ever more important. Indeed, the United States Supreme Court's most recent First Amendment decisions suggest meaningful regard for the value of advertising and labeling as types of protected expression. At the same time, however, federal lawmakers are imposing ever more onerous restrictions on promotional activities and product labeling. The Authors discuss federal law relating to regulation of product labeling.