Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

The Nih-Moderna Vaccine: Public Science, Private Profit, And Lessons For The Future, Christopher J. Morten

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary highlights the scientific history of the NIH-Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and corroborates Sarpatwari’s theme of private capture of value created by the public. The commentary also identifies missteps by the Trump and Biden Administrations and offers policy recommendations: better contracts with and incentives for pharmaceutical manufacturers and a not-for-profit “public option” for pharmaceutical development.

Adolescent Medical Decisionmaking Rights: Reconciling Medicine And Law, Doriane Lambelet Coleman, Philip M. Rosoff

Faculty Scholarship

Dennis Lindberg came into his aunt’s care when he was in the 4th grade because his parents struggled with drug addiction and could not provide for him. At thirteen, he was baptized in his aunt’s faith as a Jehovah’s Witness. Just days after he turned fourteen, on November 6, he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The prognosis was that Dennis had a 75% chance of cure with standard oncology treatment. Consistent with the requirements of his new faith, however, Dennis told his doctors, “I do not want to be treated if the requirement is that I would have to …

Procedural Due Process And Intramural Hospital Dispute Resolution Mechanisms: The Texas Advance Directives Act, Thaddeus Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Increasingly, clinicians and commentators have been calling for the establishment of special adjudicatory dispute resolution mechanisms to resolve intractable medical futility disputes. As a leading model to follow, policymakers both around the United States and around the world have been looking to the conflict resolution provisions in the 1999 Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA).

In this article, I provide a complete and thorough review of the purpose, history, and operation of TADA. I conclude that TADA is a commendable attempt to balance the competing goals of efficiency and fairness in the resolution of these time-sensitive, life-and-death conflicts. But TADA is …

Limiting Liberty To Prevent Obesity: Justifiability Of Strong Hard Paternalism In Public Health Regulation, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Because of the largely self-regarding nature of obesity, many current and proposed public health regulatory measures are paternalistic. That is, these measures interfere with a person’s liberty with the primary goal of improving that person’s own welfare.

Paternalistic public health measures may be effective in reducing obesity. They may even be the only sufficiently effective type of regulation. But many commentators argue that paternalistic public health measures are not politically viable enough to get enacted. After all, paternalism is repugnant in our individualistic culture. It is "wrong" for the government to limit our liberty for our own good.

In this …

Financial Conflicts Of Interest In Science, Joanna K. Sax

Faculty Scholarship

This article proposes that an analysis of behavior may be utilized to create an effective policy addressing financial conflicts of interest. Importantly, this article focuses on the academics that conduct basic science.

An understanding of the background of the public-private interaction is critical to fully appreciate the rise of the financial conflicts of interest in biomedical science. Part II of this Article describes the rise of financial conflicts of interest and the types of harms that can occur in the absence of effective policy to regulate financial conflicts of interest.

Part III describes the current system addressing conflicts of interest, …

Access To Prescription Drugs: A Normative Economic Approach To Pharmacist Conscience Clause Legislation, Joanna K. Sax

Faculty Scholarship

The goals of this Article are two-fold: (1) to explain that pharmacist conscience clause legislation may be expanded to areas concerning controversial biomedical research; and (2) to demonstrate that welfare economics can be applied to analyze pharmacist conscience clause legislation. Regarding the first goal, the broad language of existing and proposed conscience clause legislation creates an umbrella that allows a pharmacist to escape liability for refusing to fill a prescription for almost any type of medication. With respect to the second goal, this Article applies welfare economics to demonstrate that pharmacist conscience clauses are a part of tort law and …

Federalism And The Future Of Health Care Reform, Richard Briffault, Sherry Glied

Faculty Scholarship

An important theme in the ongoing health care reform debate is federalism. During the battle over the Clinton Health Plan in 1993–94, the question of which level of government — federal or state — should take the leading role in health policy was almost as contentious as the particular proposals for extending access to quality health care and controlling health care costs. With the failure in 1994 to achieve comprehensive legislation at the national level, many policymakers and commentators gave fresh attention to the states as potential agents for health care reform.

Balancing Public Health Against Individual Liberty: The Ethics Of Smoking Regulations, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Ten years ago, philosopher Robert E. Goodin published "No Smoking: The Ethical Issues." Goodin argued that the liberty of smokers can be justifiably limited for two reasons: to prevent harm to third persons and to prevent harm to smokers themselves under circumstances which make their decision to smoke substantially non-autonomous. In this article Thaddeus Pope reexamines the harm principle and the soft paternalism principle in light of more recent legal developments, gives them additional content, and carefully demarcates the justificatory scope of each. Pope also defines and defends a third liberty-limiting principle, hard paternalism, arguing that the liberty of smokers …