Medical Jurisprudence Commons^™

Experimenting With The "Right To Die" In The Laboratory Of The States, Thomas A. Eaton, Edward J. Larson

Scholarly Works

The purposes of this Article are twofold. Our first purpose is to reexamine the legal foundations of a patient's right to refuse treatment. The Court's equivocal handling of the federal constitutional issues in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health invites a closer look at state constitutional, statutory and common law. The source of the underlying right will affect state experimentation with substantive and procedural rules in this area. Our second purpose is to describe the current status of the states' experiments with the right to die. That is, we elaborate in more detail on the state constitutional, statutory and …

Human Gene Therapy And The Law: An Introduction To The Literature, Edward J. Larson

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This essay will review introductory selections on the law of human gene therapy in the context of four common starting points: the discovery of DNA structure, past efforts to regulate genetic engineering, America's experience with eugenics, and historical, constitutional, or cultural values.

The Case For A Post-Mortem Organ Draft And A Proposed Model Organ Draft Act, Theodore Silver

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No abstract provided.

Immunity Doctrine, Efficiency Promotion, And The Applicability Of Federal Antitrust Law To State-Approved Hospital Acquisitions, James F. Ponsoldt

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The question whether hospitals should be regarded as private businesses, or alternatively as public utilities, in order to maximize productive and allocative efficiency, remains controversial. In recent years, the ability of American hospitals and doctors to provide excellent health care services has been hindered by rising costs and distribution problems. This combination of rising costs and decreased distribution has prevented medical services from reaching the portion of the American population that has the greatest need for these services.

In response to these problems, Congress in 1974 passed the National Health Planning and Resources Development Act (NHPRDA). The NHPRDA is designed …

Res Ipsa Loquitur And Medical Malpractice In Georgia: A Reassessment, Thomas A. Eaton

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Part II of this Article addresses the threshold issue of when a court may consider a medical accident as one that ordinarily does not occur in the absence of negligence. This part criticizes the blanket rejection of res ipsa loquitur in Georgia malpractice opinions. Judicial hostility toward res ipsa loquitur in these cases is based in large part on a misunderstanding of the so-called presumption of due care. This part then explains how an inference of negligence may be harmonized with traditional fault-based malpractice doctrine. Finally, this part addresses judicial concerns about the sufficiency of evidence. It is argued that …

"Body-Snatching" Reconsidered: The Exhumation Of Some Early American Legal History, Walter Hellerstein

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The "heroic age of anatomy" in America was that era, prior to the general enactment of laws legalizing the procurement of cadavers for medical purposes, during which students of medicine (as well as profit-seeking professionals) resorted to the illegal practice of "body-snatching" in order to obtain dissection material for medical studies. This period, which extended form the late seventeenth to well into the nineteenth century, was marked by frequent riots resulting from a deep-rooted public hostility towards grave-robbing and dissection. This hostility was rarely tempered by any understanding of or sympathy for the purposes for which the "resurrectionists," as they …