Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons^™

Murder, She Wrote Or Was It Merely Selective Nontreatment?, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article will both explore and thereby establish the medical, ethical, and legal validity of selective nontreatment of severely handicapped newborns. A construct for principled decision-making, tied to a basic recognition of the right of self-determination, as shaped by compassion and validated principles of triage and cost-benefit analysis, will be seen as the most effective means for the states-and not the federal government-to evaluate the intensely complex issues associated with allocating scarce medical resources to defective infants. Governmental intrusions into the familial decision- making forum in these circumstances must be kept to a minimum and allowed only in grave cases.

Introduction: The Right To Die After Cruzan, Diane E. Hoffmann

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Of Mice But Not Men: Problems Of The Randomized Clinical Trial, Samuel Hellman, Deborah Hellman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Genetic Discrimination: The Use Of Genetically Based Diagnostic And Prognostic Tests By Employers And Insurers, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper analyzes the law, ethics and public policy concerning "genetic discrimination," defined as the denial of rights, privileges or opportunities on the basis of information obtained from genetically based diagnostic and prognostic tests. The Human Genome Initiative will enhance the ability to gather and organize information that may predict a person's future potential and disabilities. Enormous human benefits may ensue from understanding the etiology and pathophysiology of genetic disorders, including disease prevention through genetic counseling, and treatment of the disorders through genetic manipulation. This information will help clinicians understand and eventually treat many of the more than 4,000 diseases …

Ethical Principles For The Conduct Of Human Subject Research: Population-Based Research And Ethics, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper provides a halting first step in organizing a set of ethical guidelines for the conduct of population-based research, surveillance and practice. These principles are not distinct from, but an expansion of, traditional ethics. Research ethics, which matured significantly from the Nuremberg Code through to the Helsinki IV and the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) guidelines, nourished the individual human spirit. Ethical principles should have a similarly profound impact in the development of science and the protection of human populations in the 1990s and beyond.

Regulating Ethics Committees In Health Care Institutions - Is It Time?, Diane E. Hoffmann

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Anencephalic Newborns As Organ Donors: An Assessment Of "Death" And Legislative Policy, Kathleen L. Paliokas

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

A "Bioethics" Approach To Teaching Health Law, Alexander Morgan Capron

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Aids Epidemic: A Prism Distorting Social And Legal Principles, Alec Gray

New England Journal of Public Policy

The AIDS epidemic is affecting American society in far-reaching and unexpected ways. It touches our institutions, our value systems, and our private lives. Social issues seem to change and become distorted by the epidemic 's prismlike effect. This article examines some of the major public health issues raised by the epidemic, ranging from testing to contact tracing and quarantine. It argues that while the civil rights of individuals may have to be sacrificed to stem the spread of the disease, those rights should not be abandoned unless a clear benefit to the public health would result.

Issues of discrimination in …

Update - July 1986, Loma Linda University Center For Christian Bioethics

Update

In this issue:

-- Baby Jessie and Beyond
-- Newsbriefs
-- The Bouvia Decision: Right But Inadequate
-- LLU plans conference on ethics and transplantation

[ Apartheid and Morality Today ]
-- Growing Up White in South Africa
-- In Favor of Constructive Engagement
-- Divestment: Realistic Moral Opposition to Apartheid

-- What should treatment committees consider?
-- Religion and Politics on Sabbath (Editorial)
-- George Otto Schumacher, MD (1913-1986)
-- Thomas Gordon Goman, PhD (1944-1986)

A Moment In Human Development: Legal Protection, Ethical Standards And Social Policy On The Selective Non-Treatment Of Handicapped Neonates, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Selective non-treatment decisions involving severely handicapped neonates have recently come under renewed judicial and legislative scrutiny. In this article, the author examines the legal, ethical and social considerations attendant to the non-treatment decision. In Part II he discusses the predominant ethical viewpoints relating to this issue and proposes a new moral standard based on personal interests. Part III presents a survey of the jurisprudence relating to selective non-treatment decisions. Parts IV and V of this article provide a critical examination of the recently enacted Child Abuse Amendments of 1984, a federal legislative initiative designed to regulate treatment decisions relating to …

Psychosocial, Legal, And Ethical Dimensions Of Ultrasound Imaging In Pregnancy, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Handicapped Babies And The Law: The United States Position, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Quality Of Life, Sanctity Of Creation: Palliative Or Apotheosis?, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This Article will suggest an approach to facilitate decision-making where the concepts of quality of life and sanctity of life appear to clash. It is hoped that a reconciliation of these two ideas will provide an alternative to the increasing federal intervention in the process of family decision-making vis-a-vis handicapped infants.

The construct will combine deontological standards with situational, or consequential, ethics. This unique synthesis will then be placed within a sphere of expanded family advisers-medical, social, spiritual, legal, etc.-who are called into being with the birth of a genetically defective newborn. The force of the construct arises from the …

The Plight Of The Genetically Handicapped Newborn: A Comparative Analysis, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Confusion and controversy surround efforts to re-evaluate and, thus, redefine the extent to which governmental intrusion should be allowed in the doctor-patient relationship vis-a-vis the treatment or non treatment of genetically handicapped, at risk infants. The purpose of this article is to present a succinct comparative analysis of the medical-legal posture in Britain and the United States and from this analysis to develop a construct to aid the physician and the family in making decisions concerning the administration or the withholding of treatment for genetically defective newborns.

Sexuality, Privacy And The New Biology, George P. Smith Ii, Roberto Iraola

Scholarly Articles

This Article investigates two alternative methods of human conception: Specifically, the artificial insemination of unmarried women for either their own personal purposes of pregnancy without the benefit of marriage or as surrogates for infertile women. Surrogation is evaluated, then, as an analytic complement to the sexual privacy of women who are expressing their sexual freedom through unconventional means to become pregnant.

The conclusion drawn is that an unmarried woman’s fundamental right to privacy or procreation does not encompass a right to either artificial insemination or surrogation. To allow unfettered access to these two methods of conception would - quite simply …

The Razor’S Edge Of Human Bonding: Artificial Fathers And Surrogate Mothers, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article will examine the plight of the artificial father and surrogate mother by focusing on how the law views artificial insemination. From this focus, the author will explore alternative responses for dealing with problems involving surrogate mothers, donor insemination, and infertility and show their symbiotic, if not direct, relation to the problem of infertility.

Intrusions Of A Parvenu: Science, Religion, And The New Biology, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Both religion and the law must seriously consider artificial insemination so that dogma and laws are formed to incorporate the process. Science has brought the procedure to a society unequipped to deal with the religious and legal implications of birth through artificial insemination in any of its forms. Not all religions or jurisdictions can be expected to treat the process exactly alike, but there must be an effort on the part of each organization to react to the situation facing them so that their citizens will have some guidance.

Section II of this article illuminates the path science is on …

The Promise Of Abundant Life: Patenting A Magnificent Obsession, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

The purpose of this essay will be to explore the parameters of the scientific imperative to explore truth. The scope of this inquiry is shaped in part by the United States patent laws and administrative interpretations and, more specifically, by the United States Supreme Court in its recent holding allowing the new forms of life created in a laboratory to be patented. The ultimate purpose of this piece, then, is to refute the arrogance of power theory expressed as being implicit in the investigations of the vast potential for the positive achievement of good through harnessing the "New Biology." Thus, …

Great Expectations Or Convoluted Realities: Artificial Insemination In Flux, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Manipulating The Genetic Code: Jurisprudential Conundrums, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article considers the scientific, legal, ethical, and social issues of the Brave New World of Biotechnology as they existed in 1976 and as they exist — interestingly — today. Central to these issues (e.g., in vitro fertilization, genetic planning) presented in historical context, is consideration of the extent to which freedom of scientific investigation should be allowed and even encouraged by the government. In order to shape normative standards of conduct from which ethical constructs can be developed and policy developed, scientific experimentation must be promoted and designed to safeguard the common good — this, by enhancing opportunities for …

Changing Attitudes Toward Euthanasia, Alice V. Mehling

IUSTITIA

Death is a very individual matter which does not readily lend itself to collective decision. Medical ethicists frequently conclude that to allow a person to die from malice is more reprehensible than to help a person to die from mercy. The most striking change which is taking place in consideration of the problem is recognition of the need to reinforce the patient's right to decide on the course of medical treatment.

A New York Times editorial of February 3, 1903 condemned the practice of active euthanasia by comparing it to "practices of savages in all parts of the world". Seventy …

Informed Consent And Medical Experimentation, George H. Martin Jr.

IUSTITIA

Certain biomedical technologies already or almost already with us "threaten to reduce the meaning of man and to degrade the human spirit in the very process of becoming technologically feasible, long before the final stage of deployment and widespread use has been reached." It is this threat that has prompted me to consider certain medical and legal problems associated broadly with the human experimentation process. I shall be examining the concept of "informed consent" to both experimental medical therapy and nontherapeutic scientific experimentation as a means of protecting man from the potential ravages of a zealous application of scientific advances …

Barriers To Attainment Of Health Care In West Central Maine : A Critique By The Poor, Health Facilities Planning Council

Maine Collection

Barriers to Attainment of Health Care in West Central Maine : A Critique by the Poor

"Conducted by the Health Facilities Planning Council, 11 Parkwood Drive, Augusta, Maine under contract to Maine Department of Health and Welfare, June, 1969."

Contents: Foreword / Table of Contents / Introduction / Map / Franklin County / Housing / Dental Rot / Franklin County Memorial Hospital / Family Planning / RN's / State Public Health Nurses / Unmet Health Needs / The Last Outpost / Home Visit in Farmington Falls / Home Visit in Industry / Home Visit in Rangeley Area / Conversations on …

Organ Transplantation With An Incompetent Donor: Kentucky Resolves The Dilemma Of Strunk V. Strunk, Joe C. Savage

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Through A Test Tube Darkly: Artificial Insemination And The Law, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Although written forty-four years ago, this article provides a foundational analysis of the then-nascent beginnings of the legalization of artificial insemination from the judicial posture taken by the state of California to the legislative stance of Oklahoma. Analyzing the consequences of artificial insemination by a donor (A.I.D.) and by a woman’s husband (A.I.H.), the consequences of these procedures on family law — and especially illegitimacy — inheritance, and adultery, are studied and evaluated.

In order to provide some degree of stability and predictability to this obviously contentious area within Law, Science, and Medicine, this article urges measured experimentation in genetics …