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Full-Text Articles in Law

An Empirical Method For Materiality: Would Conflict Of Interest Disclosures Change Patient Decisions?, Christopher Robertson Jan 2014

An Empirical Method For Materiality: Would Conflict Of Interest Disclosures Change Patient Decisions?, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

The law has long been concerned with the agency problems that arise when advisors, such as attorneys or physicians, put themselves in financial relationships that create conflicts of interest. If the financial relationship is “material” to the transactions proposed by the advisor, then non-disclosure of that information may be pertinent to claims of malpractice, informed consent, and even fraud, as well as to professional discipline. In these sorts of cases, materiality is closely related to the question of causation, roughly turning on whether the withheld information might have changed the decision of a reasonable advisee (i.e., patient). The injured plaintiff …


Prosecuting Doctors For Trusting Patients, Deborah Hellman Jan 2009

Prosecuting Doctors For Trusting Patients, Deborah Hellman

Faculty Scholarship

In an escalating phase of our country’s war on drugs, doctors treating patients in pain are being prosecuted for drug trafficking under the Controlled Substances Act. While doctors surely can be guilty of drug trafficking when they sell drugs for money, lately some doctors have been prosecuted for violations of a statute that requires knowingly distributing or dispensing controlled substances in an unauthorized manner for simply being willfully blind to the fact that their patients were reselling the drugs. While willful blindness may be an apt substitute for knowledge in the traditional drug courier scenario, doctors in these cases are …


Physicians And Torture: Lessons From The Nazi Doctors, George J. Annas Jan 2007

Physicians And Torture: Lessons From The Nazi Doctors, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

How is it possible? What are the personal, professional and political contexts that allow physicians to use their skills to torture and kill rather than heal? What are the psychological characteristics and the social, cultural and political factors that predispose physicians to participate in human rights abuses? What can be done to recognize at-risk situations and attempt to provide corrective or preventive strategies? This article examines case studies from Nazi Germany in an attempt to answer these questions. Subjects discussed include the psychology of the individual perpetrator, dehumanization, numbing, splitting, omnipotence, medicalization, group dynamics, obedience to authority, diffusion of responsibility, …


A Prescription For Gender: How Medical Professionals Can Help Secure Equality For Transgender People, Jennifer L. Levi Jan 2003

A Prescription For Gender: How Medical Professionals Can Help Secure Equality For Transgender People, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

Transgender people have made tremendous legal gains in the last several years. We live in a period of rapid social change, hopefully approaching a time when transgender individuals and our families enjoy the same legal rights and privileges afforded to other members of society. However, we are not there yet. This essay discusses the role medical professionals must play if transgender people are to achieve full humanity in light of legal developments in the areas of employment and family law. Medical professionals are at the heart of directing and implementing policies that have an enormous effect on the lives of …


The Limits Of Law At The Limits Of Life: Lessons From Cannibalism, Euthanasia, Abortion, And The Court-Ordered Killing Of One Conjoined Twin To Save The Other, George J. Annas Jan 2001

The Limits Of Law At The Limits Of Life: Lessons From Cannibalism, Euthanasia, Abortion, And The Court-Ordered Killing Of One Conjoined Twin To Save The Other, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The subject is law at the beginning and end of life. Most of my work is in the area of general health law: law and medicine, public health law, and health and human rights. But this is my favorite subject area, and I expect you to ask me the hardest questions you can. I am not saying I can answer them, but if I cannot that is my fault, not yours. I am going to make a pretty broad argument today about law and medicine; specifically about how new medical technology and medical practice standards have eclipsed religion (and sometimes …