Law Commons^™

Cloning And The U.S. Congress, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

In the immediate aftermath of the birth of Dolly the sheep, the national debate over the banning of human cloning focused almost exclusively on the issue of safety. President Bill Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission, for example, recommended in 1997 that Congress impose a five-year moratorium on attempts to clone a human because of the likely physical harm to the cloned infant. Congress did not act on this suggestion, but even if it had, that moratorium would already be almost over. Cloning is now back on the congressional agenda, with a new focal point: the creation of cloned embryos for …

Waste And Longing: The Legal Status Of Placental Blood Banking, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Waste is not always what it seems. In his Cold War novel Underworld, for example, Don DeLillo explores the multifaceted qualities of waste. “Waste,” he notes, “is the secret history, the underhistory, the way archaeologists dig out the history of early cultures, every sort of bone and broken tool, literally from under the ground.”1 And waste can also be transformed into money:

They are trading garbage in the commodity pits in Chicago. They are making synthetic feces in Dallas. You can sell your testicles to a firm in Russia that will give you four thousand dollars and then remove …

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Regulating Heart And Liver Transplants In Massachusetts: An Overview Of The Report Of The Task Force On Organ Transplantation, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Organ transplantation has been a favorite topic of health lawyers since its inception. Organ procurement was addressed with the adoption of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act in all fifty states, and "brain death" has been recognized both judicially and legislatively across the country. Nonetheless, it is now apparent that the major problems in organ transplantation are not legal and thus neither are their solutions. Heart and liver transplants are extreme and expensive interventions that few individuals can afford and few hospitals can offer. In an era of economic scarcity, how (if at all) should organ transplant procedures and other extreme …