Law Commons^™

Bioethics: Ethical Considerations Of Ventilator Triage During A Pandemic, Susannah J. Gleason, William J. Keegan

Georgia State University Law Review

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals across the country faced unprecedented volumes of patients seeking treatment related to the respiratory complications of the virus. As a result, states were forced to reassess existing scarce resource allocation guidelines to appropriately accommodate the high demand. This Peach Sheet analyzes the ethical considerations implicated in enacting and following these guidelines when treating patients, specifically in the context of ventilator triage in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Equitable Allocation Of Covid-19 Vaccines: An Analysis Of The Initial Allocation Plans Of Cdc's Jurisdictions With Implications For Disparate Impact Monitoring, Harald Schmidt, Rebecca Weintraub, Michelle A. Williams, Alison Buttenheim, Emily Sadecki, Helen Wu, Lawrence O. Gostin, Angela A. Shen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Major global and national vaccine allocation guidelines urge planners to allocate vaccines in ways that recognize, and ideally reduce, existing societal inequities within countries. However, allocation plans of the US will be determined individually by each of the CDC’s 64 jurisdictions (states, the District of Columbia, five cities, and territories). We analyzed whether jurisdictions have incorporated novel approaches to reduce inequity, based on plans published by the CDC in early November 2020 (63 summaries [98% of all jurisdictions] and 47 full guidance documents [73% of all, including all 50 states]).

Eighteen states adopted a novel proposal to use a disadvantage …

Video; Health Law & Ethics 2020, Kathy Cerminara, Jonathan Kroner Law Office, Mcdermott Will & Emery Llp, Lubell & Rosen, Gerald M. Morris

NSU Law Seminar Series

This program will focus on the current climate of health law and the necessary steps used through federal practice to adjust to the ever-changing atmosphere of new legislation. Attendees will learn about the various paths within the practice, about emerging new laws, outreach and training, and how to become involved in the federal practice of health law. The presenters will explain what you need to get started, what different types of experiences and exposure might be helpful in entering the field and instruct you on maintaining ethics by knowing and following the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Model Rules …

Is It Lawful And Ethical To Prioritize Racial Minorities For Covid-19 Vaccines?, Harald Schmidt, Lawrence O. Gostin, Michelle A. Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disproportionately affected racial minorities in the United States resulting in higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death. With a limited supply after the initial approval of a safe and effective vaccine, difficult legal and ethical choices will have to be made on priority access for individuals. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has recommended prioritization of racial minorities who are “worse off” socioeconomically and epidemiologically. TheWorld Health Organization (WHO) similarly cautioned that “colorblind” allocation frameworks could perpetuate or exacerbate existing injustices. Both NASEM and WHO urge policy makers to allocate vaccines in …

Genome Editing 2020: Ethics And Human Rights In Germline Editing In Humans And Gene Drives In Mosquitoes, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The moon landing, now more than a half century in the past, has turned out to be the culmination of human space travel, rather than its beginning. Genetic engineering, especially applications of CRISPR, now presents the most publicly discussed engineering challenges—and not just technical, but ethical as well. In this article, I will use the two most controversial genomic engineering applications to help identify the ethics and human rights implications of these research projects. Each of these techniques directly modifies the mechanisms of evolution, threatens to alter our views of ourselves as humans and our planet as our home, and …

Setting Priorities Fairly In Response To Covid-19: Identifying Overlapping Consensus And Reasonable Disagreement, David Wasserman, Govind C. Persad, Joseph Millum

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Proposals for allocating scarce lifesaving resources in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic have aligned in some ways and conflicted in others. This paper attempts a kind of priority setting in addressing these conflicts. In the first part, we identify points on which we do not believe that reasonable people should differ—even if they do. These are (i) the inadequacy of traditional clinical ethics to address priority-setting in a pandemic; (ii) the relevance of saving lives; (iii) the flaws of first-come, first-served allocation; (iv) the relevance of post-episode survival; (v) the difference between age and other factors that affect life-expectancy; …

Regulating Care Robots, Valarie K. Blake

Law Faculty Scholarship

Care robots already assist the elderly in some nursing homes around the globe and could be in widespread use in hospitals and private homes sooner than we think. These robots promise great hope for patients: robots can provide increased independence, assistance with daily living, comfort and distraction during procedures, education, and companionship during vulnerable and lonely times in patients' lives. Despite these promising features, there are a number of concerns; care robots, designed with the aim of winning patient trust and affection, have unprecedented access to personal lives as well as recording and sensory capabilities beyond any human. They pose …

Meat Processing Workers And The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Subrogation Of People, Public Health, And Ethics To Profits And A Path Forward, Kelly K. Dineen

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing health injustices. People who are Latino/Latinx, Black, Indigenous or members of other minority groups have disproportionately paid with their very lives. The pandemic has also exposed the complex interdependence of worker health and well-being, community health, and economic security. Industries like meat processing facilities—with congregate and high-density workplaces staffed by workers who are already disadvantaged by structural discrimination—must reckon with decades of subrogation and exploitation of workers. During this pandemic, the industry has pushed that exploitation to a point of no return. Policies to protect workers need a reset to an orientation …

The Personal Responsibility Pandemic: Centering Solidarity In Public Health And Employment Law, Lindsay F. Wiley, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

Our nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has revealed fundamental flaws in our legal regimes governing both public health and employment. Public health orders have called on individuals to make sacrifices to protect society as a whole. Simple fairness dictates that the burdens should be shared as widely as the benefits. And the case for burden-sharing does not rest on fairness alone. Public health measures are more likely to succeed when those who are subject to them understand them as fair1 and when their cooperation is supported. 2 Predictably, our pandemic response has placed disproportionate burdens on those who are …

Why The Government Shouldn't Pay People To Get Vaccinated Against Covid-19, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

As several pharmaceutical companies approach the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking authorization to bring COVID-19 vaccines to market, concerns about vaccine mistrust cloud the prospects of imminent vaccination efforts across the globe. These concerns have prompted some commentators to suggest that governments may nudge vaccine uptake by paying people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. This post argues that, even if potentially viable, this idea is undesirable against the backdrop of a pandemic marked by the intertwined phenomena of health misinformation and mistrust in public health authorities. Even beyond the context of COVID-19, paying for vaccination is likely to remain …