Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons^™

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Winter 2015

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Integrating Social Justice For Health Professional Education: Self-Reflection, Advocacy, And Collaborative Learning, Lena Hatchett, Nanette Elster, Katherine Wasson, Lisa Anderson, Kayhan Parsi

Journal of Health Ethics

Justice as fair and equal treatment for all is one of the core visions for health professional education to reduce racial and economic health disparities in bioethics, nursing and medicine. However, the current reality of deeply entrenched structural inequities across race, class, gender, and social privilege make it a challenge for students to become aware of practical health equity solutions. This paper illustrates how faculty and students can build their understanding of health equity solutions in health professional education through self-reflection, self-direction, advocacy, and collaborative learning opportunities. We provide lessons learned and teaching resources from nursing, medicine, and law.

Markets, Morals, And Limits In The Exchange Of Human Eggs, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Bibles To Biomarkers: The Future Of The Dsm And Forensic Psychiatric Diagnosis, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Given its importance to the law, it is regrettable that judges and lawyers do not fully understand how the DSM is constructed, and the bedrock of values on which it rests. As evidence of this, lawyers and judges often refer to the DSM as the “psychiatric bible.” This language is both fascinating and perplexing. This Article will attempt to correct the notion that the DSM is a legal “psychiatric bible” by explaining how it is created and used by the medical field. It will also provide a few reasons why the law may have come to view it as a …

Giving Thanks: The Ethics Of Grateful Patient Fundraising, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

Grateful patient fundraising, defined as the solicitation of philanthropic donations by health care providers from current and former patients, raises a number of legal and ethical issues. Elsewhere, I detailed the confidentiality issues raised by the use and disclosure of patient identifiable information by hospital development officers, major gifts officers, institutionally-related foundations, and commercial fundraisers, and proposed corrections to federal health information confidentiality regulations to better balance the competing aims of health care philanthropy and health information confidentiality. In this Article, I analyze several outstanding issues raised by physician involvement in grateful patient fundraising. That is, physicians who solicit philanthropic …

The Injustice Of Inclusion And Fair Opportunity: Exploiting Children In Medical Research For The Benefit Of An Unworthy Society, Ruqaiijah Yearby

All Faculty Scholarship

The history of pediatric medical research has been characterized as a history of child abuse. Usually, the debate regarding the use of children in medical research has centered on questions of Autonomy (informed consent) and Beneficence (the best interest of the child based on a benefit risk analysis). The debate has rarely focused on the question of which children should participate in medical research by discussing the legal principle of Justice (prohibits use of vulnerable populations for medical research who are already overly burdened for medical research unrelated to health issues affecting them and requires that populations who participate in …

Conceiving Of Products And The Products Of Conception: Reflections On Commodification, Consumption, Art, And Abortion, Jody L. Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper rejects the dichotomy between patient and consumer roles and focuses instead on how attributes of each are meaningful to those seeking health care. Arguing that health care is already commodified, it suggests that both medicine and the market offer strategies for handling commodification. The important questions are how we understand these attributes and their role in care relationships, and which attributes we should encourage. The medical profession and patient role have long accommodated commodification, using fiduciary roles, flat fees and opaque pricing to distance payment and pricing from care provision. In contrast, the market and consumer role emphasize …

Shifting Our Focus From Retribution To Social Justice: An Alternative Vision For The Treatment Of Pregnant Women Who Harm Their Fetuses, April L. Cherry

Journal of Law and Health

The ways in which society responds to pregnant women whose behavior purportedly harms their fetuses can be explored from a variety of legal vantage points. This article argues that the criminal law model currently used is ineffective. The assignment of criminal liability to pregnant women is often rooted in fetal personhood and maternal deviance discourse. Criminal law solutions fail because they fail to take into account the fact that maternal behavior is often the result of a myriad of the social and economic conditions over which pregnant women have little or no control. The criminal law model, therefore, simply punishes …

Anorexia/Bulimia, Transcendence, And The Potential Impact Of Romanticized/Sexualized Death Imagery, Heather D. Schild

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Presented November 10, 2014. Papers presented for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2014

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Documenting Mass Rape: Medical Evidence Collection Techniques As Humanitarian Technology, Jaimie Morse

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Aim: Emerging global networks of human rights activists, doctors, and nurses have advocated for increased collection of medical evidence in conflict-affected countries to corroborate allegations of sexual violence and facilitate prosecution in international and domestic courts. Such initiatives are part of broader shifts in human rights advocacy to document human rights violations using rigorous, standardized methodologies. In this paper, I consider three principal forms of medical evidence to document sexual violence and their use in these settings: the patient medical record, the medical certificate, and the sexual assault medical forensic exam (commonly known as the “rape kit”).

Methods: Combining archival …

An Efficient Standardized Method Of Maintaining Quality Assurance In Therapeutic Treatment Record Keeping, Kelsey Michael Bradshaw

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Quality assurance (QA) within the field of mental health is the practice of monitoring and reviewing services to ensure adherence to specified standards of care. Agents within State governments and various organizations influence record keeping procedures through ethical guidelines and law. For instance, client records must be maintained for all clients receiving mental health services, including informed consent, releases of information, treatment plans, and progress notes. Accurate and timely record keeping procedures assure quality mental health services. However, professionals sometimes err in the maintenance of client records, which can have a negative impact on services, clients, and practitioners. To assist …

When Harvard Said No To Eugenics: The J. Ewing Mears Bequest, 1927, Paul A. Lombardo

Faculty Publications By Year

James Ewing Mears (1838-1919) was a founding member of the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery. His 1910 book, The Problem of Race Betterment, laid the groundwork for later authors to explore the uses of surgical sterilization as a eugenic measure. Mears left $60,000 in his will to Harvard University to support the teaching of eugenics. Although numerous eugenic activists were on the Harvard faculty, and who of its Presidents were also associated with the eugenics movement, Harvard refused the Mears gift. The bequest was eventually awarded to Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. This article explains why Harvard turned its back …

An Inevitable Conflict: The Subordination Of Contract Principles To Informed Consent In The Business Of Banking Umbilical Cord Blood, Abigail Norris

William & Mary Business Law Review

This Note explores the business of banking umbilical cord blood for later, and potentially life-saving, use. It discusses the importance of the stem cells found in umbilical cord blood, and the complexities involved in applying business models to its collection, storage, and use. Furthermore, this Note discusses how contracts governing the storage and use of umbilical cord blood can conflict with concepts of human dignity and informed consent. It concludes that in the event umbilical cord blood banking contracts conflict with informed consent, the contract should be subordinated to a person’s understanding, acquired through procedures intended to achieve the patient, …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2014

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Legal And Ethical Responsibilities Following Brain Death: The Mcmath And Muñoz Cases, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What are the legal and ethical implications of continuing to treat a brain dead patient? And may a hospital refuse to provide such treatment? These ethical and legal problems are raised in two recent cases. In the first Marlise Muñoz, a pregnant woman declared brain dead, was kept on life support against her family’s wishes due to the treating hospital’s interpretation of a Texas fetal protection law. In the other a hospital refused to treat Jahi McMath, a brain dead girl, despite her family's entreaties. The cases, at first, appear similar because in each case the hospital was refusing to …

Finding Fault?: Exploring Legal Duties To Return Incidental Findings In Genomic Research, Elizabeth R. Pike, Karen H. Rothenberg, Benjamin E. Berkman

Faculty Scholarship

The use of whole genome sequencing in biomedical research is expected to produce dramatic advances in human health. The increasing use of this powerful, data-rich new technology in research, however, will inevitably give rise to incidental findings (IFs), findings with individual health or reproductive significance that are beyond the aims of the particular research, and the related questions of whether and to what extent researchers have an ethical obligation to return IFs. Many have concluded that researchers have an ethical obligation to return some findings in some circumstances, but have provided vague or context-dependent approaches to determining which IFs must …

Setting The Stage: Enhancing Understanding Of Bioethical Challenges With Theatre, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Theatre provides a dynamic platform to reflect upon the ethical, legal, and social implications of medical innovations and the powerful impact on personal and professional relationships. This article explores the last four to five decades of theatre, which coincide with the evolution of the formal discipline of bioethics and the field of medical humanities, to aid in the understanding of the bioethical challenges we face today and to place them in an historical and societal context. Four plays are discussed that reflect the ethical and legal context of their eras and reveal significant ethical challenges for us to consider.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Winter 2014

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Nudging The Fda, W. Nicholson Price Ii, I. Glenn Cohen

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "The FDA’s regulation of drugs is frequently the subject of policy debate, with arguments falling into two camps. On the one hand, a libertarian view of patients and the health care system holds high the value of consumer choice. Patients should get all the information and the drugs they want; the FDA should do what it can to enforce some basic standards but should otherwise get out of the way. On the other hand, a paternalist view values the FDA’s role as an expert agency standing between patients and a set of potentially dangerous drugs and potentially unscrupulous or …

The Rise Of The Reproductive Brothel In The Global Economy: Some Thoughts On Reproductive Tourism, Autonomy, And Justice, April L. Cherry

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article explores some of the ethical issues raised by the rise of a global reproductive tourism model that includes “the reproductive brothel,” a place where women are gathered together in confined areas and their reproductive capacities sold to men as commodities. After exploring the phenomenon of reproductive tourism as it has developed in India, and the ways in which economic globalization has shaped the practice, the article then considers two ethical responses to the development of the practice of global commercial surrogacy; the first of which focuses on the value of autonomy (both as choice and as dignity), and …

Context Matters: Disability, The End Of Life, And Why The Conversation Is Still So Difficult, Alicia Ouellette

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dispute Resolution Mechanisms For Intractable Medical Futility Disputes, Thaddeus Mason Pope

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Schiavo To Death Panels: How Media Coverage Of End-Of-Life Issues Affects Public Opinion, Sherrie Dulworth

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Advance Directives, Dementia, And Eligibility For Physician-Assisted Death, Paul T. Menzel

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Right-To-Die Cases: A New York Historical Perspective, Sol Wachtler

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Health Justice Denied Or Delayed At The End Of Life: A Crisis Needing Remedial Action, David C. Leven

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Give Me Liberty At My Death: Expanding End-Of-Life Choice In Massachusetts, Kathryn L. Tucker

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

A New Life For Wrongful Living, Nadia N. Sawicki

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Limits Of Autonomy: Force-Feedings In Catholic Hospitals And In Prisons, Ann Neumann

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.