Law Commons^™

Pediatric Dentists’ Considerations Concerning Obesity-Related Education For Parents Of Young Children: Who Should Educate About What, How And When?, Arianne Swanson Dds, Ms, James R. Boynton Dds, Ms, Larry B. Salzmann Dds, Yu-Ju Yang Dds, Marita R. Inglehart Dipl. Psych., Dr. Phil., Dr. Phil. Habil

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This study aimed to explore pediatric dentists' perspectives on obesity-related interventions for parents of young children. A web-based survey was administered to 210 American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry members. Findings revealed that respondents considered it important for various healthcare professionals, especially pediatricians and nurse practitioners, to engage in obesity-related parent education. Strong consensus existed on educating parents about the link between early childhood caries and diet, soft drink and fruit juice consumption, and healthy snacking. The study also found positive attitudes correlated with increased engagement in objective weight determination, data collection, and diet/nutrition counseling.

The Affordable Care Act, Experience Rating, And The Problem Of Non-Vaccination, Eric Esshaki

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Polio, the whooping cough, and the mumps, among many other communicable diseases, were once prevalent in communities within the developed world and killed millions of people.1 The advent of vaccinations contained or eradicated several of these diseases.2 However, these diseases still exist in the environment3 and are making a comeback in the United States.4 Their persistence is directly attributable to the rising trend among parents refusing to vaccinate their children.5 One proposed solution to this problem is to hold parents liable in tort when others are harmed by their failure to vaccinate. Another proposed solution argues that parents should pay …

The Dangers Of Psychotropic Medication For Mentally Ill Children: Where Is The Child’S Voice In Consenting To Medication? An Empirical Study, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

When a child with a mental illness is being prescribed psychotropic medication. who decides whether the child should take the medication — the parent or the child? What if the child is sixteen years of age? What if the child is in foster care: Should the parent or social service agency decide? Prior to administering psychotropic medication, what specific information should be provided to the person authorized to consent on behalf of the child? Should children be permitted to refuse psychotropic medications? If so, at what age should a child he able to refuse such medication What procedures should be …

Filial Support Laws In The Modern Era: Domestic And International Comparison Of Enforcement Practices For Laws Requiring Adult Children To Support Indigent Parents, Katherine C. Pearson

Journal Articles

Family responsibility and support laws have a long but mixed history. When first enacted, policy makers used such laws to declare an official policy that family members should support each other, rather than draw upon public resources. This article tracks modern developments with filial support laws that purport to obligate adult children to financially assist their parents, if indigent or needy. The author diagrams filial support laws that have survived in the 21st Century and compares core components in the United States (including Puerto Rico) and post-Soviet Union Ukraine. While the laws are often similar in wording and declared intent, …

Will Contests: From Start To Finish., Joyce Moore

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article primarily focuses on the practical problems facing attorneys and courts when evaluating and proving up a will or trust in contested cases. The focus extends further into the special procedural and evidentiary rules applicable to these actions, the use and misuse of summary judgment proceedings in these cases, and some observations regarding developing trends and strategies in will and trust contest litigation. Admittedly, this area of practice is a melting pot of presumptions, exceptions, threshold hurdles, capacity qualms, evidentiary issues, strategic clauses, and countless other headache-inducing legal issues. Yet, attorneys must diligently juggle all of them while also …

Parents Should Not Be Legally Liable For Refusing To Vaccinate Their Children, Jay Gordon

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Should a parent who takes advantage of a personal belief exemption to avoid vaccinating a child be held liable if that child infects other people? No, because there are valid medical reasons for choosing this exemption and tracing direct transmission of these illnesses from an unvaccinated child to another person is virtually impossible.

The Problem Of Vaccination Noncompliance: Public Health Goals And The Limitations Of Tort Law, Daniel B. Rubin, Sophie Kasimow

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Imposing tort liability on parents who fail to vaccinate their children would not serve the public health and public policy interests that drive childhood immunization efforts. The public policy goals of vaccination are to slow the spread of disease and to reduce mortality and morbidity. Our country’s public health laws already play a substantial role in furthering these goals. Although application of tort law may be an appropriate response to some of the problems that result from vaccination noncompliance, there also is a need to cultivate public understanding of the connection between individual actions and collective wellbeing. It is doubtful …

Gambling With The Health Of Others, Stephen P. Teret, Jon S. Vernick

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The health and wellbeing of the public is, in part, a function of the behavior of individuals. When one individual’s behavior places another at a foreseeable and easily preventable risk of illness or injury, tort liability can play a valuable role in discouraging that conduct. This is true in the context of childhood immunization.

Unintended Consequences: The Primacy Of Public Trust In Vaccination, Jason L. Schwartz

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The increasing availability of personal belief exemptions from state vaccination requirements is a growing concern among proponents of vaccination. Holding parents of non-vaccinated children liable to those they infect is among the responses proposed to maintain high vaccination rates. Even if motivated by a sincere desire to maximize the benefits of vaccination throughout society, such a step would be inadvisable, further entrenching opponents of vaccination and adding to the atmosphere of confusion and unnecessary alarm that has become increasingly common among parents of children for whom vaccination is recommended.

Challenging Personal Belief Immunization Exemptions: Considering Legal Responses, Alexandra Stewart

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Public health agencies and citizens should employ legal approaches to hold parents accountable for refusing to vaccinate their children. The judiciary would craft an effective response to defeat the threat posed by these parents. Public-nuisance law may offer a legal mechanism to hold vaccine objectors liable for their actions.

Choices Should Have Consequences: Failure To Vaccinate, Harm To Others, And Civil Liability, Douglas S. Diekema

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

A parent’s decision not to vaccinate a child may place others at risk if the child becomes infected and exposes others to the disease. Should an individual harmed by an infection transmitted from a child whose parents chose to forgo vaccination have a negligence claim against those parents? While I do not hold a legal degree and therefore cannot speak directly to issues of law, as a physician and ethicist it seems to me that the basic elements that comprise negligence claims—harm, duty, breach of duty, and causation—are met in some cases where parents forgo vaccination.

Thou Good And Faithful Servant, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Lawmakers are stewards of social resources. A current debate-over screening newborns for genetic disorders-illuminates dilemmas of that stewardship that have particularly plagued bioethics. Recently in the Report, Mary Ann Baily and Thomas Murray told the story of little Ben Haygood. He died from MCADD, a genetic disorder that can make long fasting fatal. Screening at birth would have let doctors alert Ben's parents. "After Ben died," Baily and Murray wrote, "his father became a passionate advocate for expanding Mississippi's newborn screening program to add MCADD and other disorders." Soon, the Ben Haygood Comprehensive Newborn Screening Act increased the number …

Disability And The Duties Of Potential Parents, Janet Malek

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

“Culture Of Life” Politics At The Bedside: The Case Of Terri Schiavo, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

For the first time in the history of the United States, Congress met in a special emergency session on Sunday, March 20, to pass legislation aimed at the medical care of one patient — Terri Schiavo. President George W. Bush encouraged the legislation and flew back to Washington, D.C., from his vacation in Crawford, Texas, so that he could be on hand to sign it immediately. In a statement issued three days earlier, he said: “The case of Terri Schiavo raises complex issues. . . . Those who live at the mercy of others deserve our special care and concern. …

Regulating Teenage Abortion In The United States: Politics And Policy, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Thirty-four US states currently require pregnant minors either to notify their parents or get their consent before having a legal abortion. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of theses statutes provided that minors are also given an alternative mechanism for abortion approval that does not involve parents. The mechanism used is the 'judicial bypass hearing' at which minors persuade judges that they are mature and informed enough to make the abortion decision themselves. While most minors receive judicial approval, the hearings intrude into the most personal aspects of a young woman's life. The hearings, while formally civil in nature, …

Extremely Preterm Birth And Parental Authority To Refuse Treatment: The Case Of Sidney Miller, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Disputes between physicians and patients over medical care have tended toward resolution in both the courts and ethics committees, with each of these bodies ultimately deciding that the informed, competent patient must be the final decision maker. Parents, too, have the authority to make medical decisions for their children, but these decisions can be challenged if physicians do not believe they are medically reasonable. One bioethical issue, however, is as intractable today as it was 30 years ago, when it began to be publicly discussed: the extent of parental authority to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment for an extremely premature infant. …

Conjoined Twins: The Limits Of Law At The Limits Of Life, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Conjoined twins have been the subject of scientific exhibits, medical study, human curiosity, and even entertainment, but until the year 2000, conjoined twins had never been the subject of a courtroom battle. A unique case that was the subject of two British court decisions deserves study.1 The case illustrates the difficulty of applying legal principles to unprecedented life-and-death decisions involving proposed medical interventions for children — particularly when parents and physicians disagree about what should be done.

Minors As Medical Decision Makers: The Pretextual Reasoning Of The Court In The Abortion Cases, J. Shoshanna Ehrlich

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

By examining the Court's failure to consider the allocation of authority between parents and children in the critical realm of medical decision making, this article exposes the irrationality of the Court's acceptance of limitations on the abortion rights of minors and reveals the pronatalist thrust of the parental involvement decisions. The article begins by looking at how the Roe Court characterized abortion as a medical decision, followed by a discussion about the medical decision-making rights of minors. Rooted in this medical paradigm, the article then turns to the parental involvement cases to examine the Court's failure to consider the medical …

An Emerging Ethical And Medical Dilemma: Should Physicians Perform Sex Assignment Surgery On Infants With Ambiguous Genitalia?, Hazel Glenn Beh, Milton Diamond

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article discusses the development of a surgical approach to treating intersex infants and others with genital anomalies that began in the late 1950s and 1960s and became standard in the 1970s. Although professional literature has recently questioned the surgical approach to the treatment of infants, controversy surrounding treatment persists and the medical community now is divided. How sex reassignment surgery for intersex infants became a routine recommendation of practitioners and how parents were persuaded to consent to such radical surgeries provide a cautionary tale that is relevant to both medicine and law.

Government As God: An Update On Federal Intervention In The Treatment Of Critically Ill Newborns, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

Whether a severely impaired or critically ill infant should receive lifesaving, and sometimes extraordinary, medical treatment, or be allowed to die, is hotly debated. The issue initially garnered public attention in 1982, when an infant who was born with Down's Syndrome, “Baby Doe,” was allowed to die from a correctable birth defect. Following this, the federal government took a lead role in determining the fate of critically ill newborns. In the meantime, doctors, philosophers, and others have debated whether federal interference in this area is appropriate.

This essay will bring the reader up to date on the “Baby Doe” issue …

Herd Behavior In Designer Genes, Peter H. Huang

Publications

The ability of individuals to choose their children's genes has increased over time and may ultimately culminate in a world involving free market reprogenetic technologies. Reprogenetic technologies combine advances in reproductive biology and genetics to provide humans increased control over their children's genes. This Article offers economic perspectives that are helpful in understanding the possibly unexpected ethical, legal, and social issues at stake in using reprogenetic technologies for trait enhancement selection. The Appendix analyzes two competitive games that might arise in such a biotechnological society. Specifically, the Article focuses on herd behavior, caused by either a popularity contest or positional …

Rights Discourse And Neonatal Euthanasia, Carl Schneider

Book Chapters

At the heart of our difficulty in approaching neonatal euthanasia lie the intractable questions it raises: What is human life? When is death preferable to life? What do parents owe their children? What does society owe the suffering? Those moral questions could hardly be more perplexing, yet they are further complicated when they must be resolved not informally and case by case, but through generally applicable social rules. This is so for numerous reasons. For instance, the wide range of deeply held opinions about neonatal euthanasia makes rules hard to formulate, and the wide range of factual situations in which …

Justification By Faith, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

In June 1997 a sixteen-year-old girl named Shannon Nixon began to feel ill. Her parents belonged to the Faith Tabernacle Church, one of a number of American sects which believe that illness should be treated spiritually rather than medically. Accordingly, the Nixons prayed for Shannon and took her to be anointed at their church. Shannon reported that she felt better and that the spiritual treatment had gained her her victory-her recovery. Before long, however, Shannon again felt ill. She became weaker and weaker and then fell into a coma. A few hours later she died. An autopsy revealed that she …

Fda Approved? A Critique Of The Artificial Insemination Industry In The United States, Karen M. Ginsberg

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Artificial insemination by donor is becoming an increasingly popular means to achieving parenthood. While the majority of couples use artificial insemination to overcome fertility problems, many recipients use artificial insemination to avoid passing a genetic disease to their children. However, case studies reveal the inherent dangers of artificial insemination, namely the lack of proper screening methods to avoid passing genetic diseases to children born by artificial insemination. State-by-state regulation, federal guidelines, and private adjudication have all proven to be inadequate methods of regulating the artificial insemination industry. Ginsberg proposes federal regulation as the only means of achieving a safe artificial …

A Study In Regulatory Method, Local Political Cultures, And Jurisprudential Voice: The Application Of Federal Confidentiality Law To Project Head Start, Richard C. Boldt

Michigan Law Review

This article focuses on one particular set of issues raised by the effort to coordinate the activities of Head Start centers with those of substance abuse treatment programs and the introduction of treatment and prevention functions into the daily interactions of Head Start staff and parents. These issues involve the disclosure of potentially damaging information about a Head Start parent's drug or alcohol abuse and the confidentiality considerations that arise when she or he has sought or received treatment for that abuse. Although it is possible to characterize these issues as technical, doctrinal questions of statutory and regulatory interpretation, it …

A Study In Regulatory Method, Local Political Cultures, And Jurisprudential Voice: The Application Of Federal Confidentiality Law To Project Head Start, Richard C. Boldt

Michigan Law Review

This article focuses on one particular set of issues raised by the effort to coordinate the activities of Head Start centers with those of substance abuse treatment programs and the introduction of treatment and prevention functions into the daily interactions of Head Start staff and parents. These issues involve the disclosure of potentially damaging information about a Head Start parent's drug or alcohol abuse and the confidentiality considerations that arise when she or he has sought or received treatment for that abuse. Although it is possible to characterize these issues as technical, doctrinal questions of statutory and regulatory interpretation, it …

Under Age: A Minor's Right To Consent To Health Care, Nancy Batterman ,Esq.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Religious Healing In The Courts: The Liberties And Liabilities Of Patients, Parents, And Healers, Barry Nobel

Seattle University Law Review

Accordingly, in light of this struggle to balance public health with religious liberty, this Article chronicles the evolving liberties and liabilities of religious patients, parents, and healers over the course of the twentieth century and examines the current state of religious healing law. Throughout, it advocates the greatest possible liberty for religious healing consistent with public and family security, as well as advocating equal protection under the law for all involved in religious treatment, whether they are members of organized religious groups or individual practitioners.

Rights Discourse And Neonatal Euthanasia, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Hard cases, they say, make bad law. Hard cases, we know, can also make revealing law. Hard cases identify the problems we have not found a way of solving. They reveal ways the law's goals conflict. They force us to articulate our assumptions and to examine our modes of discourse and reasoning. If there was ever a hard case for the law, it is the question of whether, how, and by whom it should be decided to allow newborn children who are severely retarded mentally or severely damaged physically to die. For many years, the law has not had to …

Special Care: Medical Decisions At The Beginning Of Life, Jonathan H. Margolies

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Special Care: Medical Decisions at the Beginning of Life by Fred M. Frohock