Law Commons^™

Pricing The Global Health Risks Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Policies to address the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) require a balancing of the health risk reductions and the costs of economic dislocations. Application of the value of a statistical life (VSL) to monetize COVID-19 deaths produces a U.S. mortality cost estimate of $1.4 trillion for deaths in the first half of 2020. This article presents worldwide COVID-19 costs for over 100 countries. The total global mortality cost through July 2, 2020 is $3.5 trillion. The United States accounts for 25% of the deaths, but 41% of the mortality cost. Adjustments for the shorter life expectancy and lower income of the …

The Health And Legal Implications Of Early Screening For Developmental Disabilities, Jennifer Safstrom, Jacqueline Safstrom

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Child development is a multifaceted process and there are certain milestones to reach that are imperative for healthy, timely growth and development.' Developmental monitoring, screening, and testing can aid in the identification, examination, and follow-up of a child's progress. However, there are a plethora of barriers which inhibit a child's ability to access and receive adequate, quality care. These broader factors, or social determinants of health, can lead to an underutilization of preventive health services, causing a delay in early identification and intervention for children. This can have serious, adverse repercussions, because targeting interventions among children from birth to five …

Electronic Cigarette Risk Beliefs And Usage After The Vaping Illness Outbreak, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

New national survey evidence on electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) risk beliefs indicates that people substantially overestimate the health risks posed by e-cigarettes, both in absolute terms and relative to conventional cigarette risk beliefs. Perceptions of the lung cancer risks and total mortality risks of conventional cigarettes function as prior risk beliefs for e-cigarettes. People believe e-cigarettes are at least 60% as risky as conventional cigarettes. Whether respondents have seen reports of vaping-related illnesses has no significant effect on risk beliefs, but there has been a modest increase in the percentage who believe that e-cigarettes are riskier than cigarettes. Accurate e-cigarette beliefs …

The Evolving Federal Response To State Marijuana, Robert Mikos

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The states have launched a revolution in marijuana policy, creating a wide gap between state and federal marijuana law. While nearly every state has legalized marijuana in at least some circumstances, federal law continues to ban the substance outright. Nonetheless, the federal response to state reforms has been anything but static during this revolution. This Essay, based on my Distinguished Speaker Lecture at Delaware Law School, examines how the federal response to state marijuana reforms has evolved over time, from War, to Partial Truce, and, next (possibly) to Capitulation. It also illuminates the ways in which this shifting federal response …

Returning Results In The Genomic Era: Initial Experiences Of The Emerge Network, Ellen W. Clayton, Georgia L. Wiesner, Alanna K. Rahm, Et Al.

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A goal of the 3rd phase of the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE3) Network was to examine the return of results (RoR) of actionable variants in more than 100 genes to consenting participants and their healthcare providers. Each of the 10 eMERGE sites developed plans for three essential elements of the RoR process: Disclosure to the participant, notification of the health care provider, and integration of results into the electronic health record (EHR). Procedures and protocols around these three elements were adapted as appropriate to individual site requirements and limitations. Detailed information about the RoR procedures at each site …

Redefining Lgbtq And Abortion Rights In Latin America: A Transnational Toolkit, Alyssa Julian

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Throughout Latin America, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ) and abortion rights movements have progressed at divergent strengths and speeds, with significant variation among countries. The region is home to some of the most restrictive and discriminatory laws when it comes to these contentious issues. This Note explores some of the reasons behind the variation in LGBTQ and abortion rights throughout the region.

This Note traces the economic and political history of Latin America to illustrate the climate in which these social movements are operating. Further, this Note offers a brief snapshot of recent global developments in LGBTQ …

Detecting Mens Rea In The Brain, Owen D. Jones, Read Montague, Gideon Yaffe

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

What if the widely used Model Penal Code (MPC) assumes a distinction between mental states that doesn’t actually exist? The MPC assumes, for instance, that there is a real distinction in real people between the mental states it defines as “knowing” and “reckless.” But is there?

If there are such psychological differences, there must also be brain differences. Consequently, the moral legitimacy of the Model Penal Code’s taxonomy of culpable mental states – which punishes those in defined mental states differently – depends on whether those mental states actually correspond to different brain states in the way the MPC categorization …

Encomium For Karen Rothenberg, Ellen W. Clayton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Karen is also a zealous advocate in the very best sense of the word. After Struewing's article appeared, she wrote an editorial that appeared in multiple newspapers arguing that women with these variants should not lose their insurance. She became deeply involved in the National Action Plan for Breast Cancer, a powerful grass roots organization. Additionally, she became involved at the National Institutes of Health and addressed, often in leadership roles, such issues to develop strategies to prevent genetic discrimination for individuals with variants that increased the risk of developing cancer, to create tools to obtain meaningful informed consent for …