Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons^™

Price And Pretense In The Baby Market, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Faculty Scholarship

Throughout the world, baby selling is formally prohibited. And throughout the world babies are bought and sold each day. As demonstrated in this Essay, the legal baby trade is a global market in which prospective parents pay, scores of intermediaries profit, and the demand for children is clearly differentiated by age, race, special needs, and other consumer preferences, with prices ranging from zero to over one hundred thousand dollars. Yet legal regimes and policymakers around the world pretend that the baby market does not exist, most notably through prohibitions against “baby selling” – typically defined as a prohibition against the …

Can There Be A Progressive Bioethics?, Richard O. Lempert

Book Chapters

Progressive bioethics-the words are not an oxymoron. Far from it; they are more redundant than oppositional. Yet they leave me almost as uneasy, as if they were contradictory. My unease exists because bioethics should be neither progressive nor regressive, neither right wing nor left wing, neither liberal nor conservative. It should be just good, sound ethics applied to the often difficult moral problems posed by present-day medicine and the genomic revolution.

I do not mean to suggest by this that all bioethicists need agree. Respectable ethicists using established modes of ethical analysis have long disagreed on and argued for different …

From A Constitutional Right To A Policy Of Exceptions: Abigail Alliance And The Future Of Access To Experimental Therapy, Patricia J. Zettler, Seema K. Shah

Faculty Publications By Year

Although there has been considerable attention to the plight of terminally ill patients with highly sympathetic constitutional and contractual claims that they should be permitted access to unapproved drugs, courts have been appropriately reluctant to grant such claims. Congress and administrative agencies have the requisite institutional competence to decide complex policy issues related to science and health care such as those involved in establishing an expanded access program. Congress and FDA should allow only limited access to unapproved therapies because there are significant concerns about the safety and efficacy of unapproved drugs. Moreover, many of the proposals to widen access …

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 …

A Free And Undemocratic Press?, Stephen J. A. Ward

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Papers presented for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2009

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Genetic Enhancements And Expectations, Kelly Sorensen

Philosophy and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Some argue that genetic enhancements and environmental enhancements are not importantly different: environmental enhancements such as private schools and chess lessons are simply the old-school way to have a designer baby. I argue that there is an important distinction between the two practices—a distinction that makes state restrictions on genetic enhancements more justifiable than state restrictions on environmental enhancements. The difference is that parents have no settled expectations about genetic enhancements.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2009

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Prosecuting Doctors For Trusting Patients, Deborah Hellman

Faculty Scholarship

In an escalating phase of our country’s war on drugs, doctors treating patients in pain are being prosecuted for drug trafficking under the Controlled Substances Act. While doctors surely can be guilty of drug trafficking when they sell drugs for money, lately some doctors have been prosecuted for violations of a statute that requires knowingly distributing or dispensing controlled substances in an unauthorized manner for simply being willfully blind to the fact that their patients were reselling the drugs. While willful blindness may be an apt substitute for knowledge in the traditional drug courier scenario, doctors in these cases are …

Physicians Who Break The Law, Diane E. Hoffmann

Faculty Scholarship

This paper takes as its starting point a recent article by Prof. Sandra Johnson, Regulating Physician Behavior: Taking Doctors “Bad Law” Claims Seriously. In the article, Johnson focuses on doctors who comply with the law despite their belief that the law is “bad”, i.e., causes them to behave in ways that are harmful to their patients. In Physicians Who Break the Law, I explore cases where physicians break the law claiming that it is “bad”. In this exploration, I focus on two areas of physicians’ lawbreaking: (1) violations of business-related laws, in particular, insurance fraud; and (2) violations of laws …

The Ethical Foundations Of Consumer-Driven Health Care, Marshall B. Kapp

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Dead Men Reproducing: Responding To The Existence Of Afterdeath Children, Browne C. Lewis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The statutory mandates are a step in the right direction, but there is still work that needs to be done. The statutes should be amended to close certain loop holes and to ensure that the physician-facilitated suicide option is available to all of the patients who need it. Persons suffering from physical conditions that will lead to death within six months should not be the only persons permitted to exit gracefully. As long as the safeguards included in the statutes are followed, there is no good reason to prohibit persons suffering from irreversible and incurable physical diseases that lead to …

The Implications Of Post-Phase 1 And "Off-Label" Treatment Use Of Experimental Drugs: How Expansive Should Expanded Access Be?, Patricia J. Zettler

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

The New Invention Creation Activity Boundary In Patent Law, Margo A. Bagley

Faculty Articles

This Essay identifies a new boundary in patent law - illegal or immoral invention creation activity - and explores the possible chal­lenges and opportunities it may facilitate. The boundary currently is neither robust nor extensive, and whether and under what cir­cumstances it should exist at all is open to debate.

Neuroscience And Health Law: An Integrative Approach?, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

Clinicians and scientists use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map sensory, motor, and cognitive function and to study the neural correlates of a range of physical and mental conditions, behaviors, characteristics, and preferences. Due to its move outside the clinical and research contexts, fMRI raises a number of ethical, legal, and social issues that are being examined within the overlapping fields of neuroethics and neurolaw. The early neuroethics and neurolaw scholarship focused heavily on the implications of fMRI for evidence law, criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. Little attention has been paid, however, to the implications of advances …

Three Ways Of Looking At A Health Law And Literature Class, Jennifer Bard, Thomas Mayo, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

The authors of this Article participated in a panel at the American Society of Law, Ethics & Medicine Conference in 2008 that examined the use of literary materials in law school to teach medical ethics (and related matters) in a law school setting. This Article and the panel on which it was based reflect views on how literature can play a valuable role in helping law students and medical students understand important legal and ethical issues and concepts in health law and bioethics. In Part I, Stacey Tovino introduces the parallel fields of “literature and medicine” and “law and literature” …

The Moral Justification For Journalism, Sandra L. Borden

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Papers presented for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2008

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Reply To Joseph Ellin's Of All Professions, Prostitution Is The Oldest (Except Possibly For Teaching), Michael Davis

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

No abstract provided.

Professions "Of All Professions, Begging Is The Best" A Paper By Michael Davis. Response By Joseph Ellin. Professor Davis' Reply, Center For The Study Of Ethics In Society

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Michael Davis' original paper was presented to the Center of the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University on October 4, 2007.

"Of All Professions Begging Is The Best" - Some Problems In The Study Of Professions, Michael Davis

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Michael Davis' original paper was presented to the Center of the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University on October 4, 2007.

Of All Professions, Prostitution Is The Oldest (Except Possibly For Teaching), Joseph Ellin

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Response by Joseph Ellin to a paper by Michael Davis Professions "Of All Professions, Begging is the Best"

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Summer 2008

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2008

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Role And Legal Status Of Health Care Ethics Committees In The United States, Diane E. Hoffmann, Anita J. Tarzian

Faculty Scholarship

Over a quarter of a century has passed since health care ethics committees (HCECs) in the United States received legal recognition as alternatives to the courts in resolving conflicts related to patient end-of-life care. By the mid to late 1980s HCECs had been established in over half of U.S. hospitals and had received a certain legitimacy in the health care system. Given their age and growth one could characterize them developmentally as emerging from adolescence and establishing themselves in young adult-hood. As a result, we might expect that they would have resolved the identify crisis characterizing the adolescent years. Yet, …

Social Justice And Health Care Management: An Elusive Quest?, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Contemporary debate on health care resource management is tied to a central moral issue: namely, how to achieve an optimum level of reasonable or appropriate treatment based on the medical condition of each patient. Failing to tackle and resolve this issue in a confident and forthright manner assures the present approach to health care decision making to continue in a state of indecisiveness if, indeed, not lethargy.

Undergirding this moral issue is the foundational economic dilemma of controlling costs while limiting access to health care resources. Finding a just solution to an equitable distribution of finite health care resources is …

Of Panjandrums, Pooh Bahs, Parvenus, And Prophets: Law, Religion, And Medical Science, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This Monograph derives from a Lecture, under the same title, given in Sydney, Australia, honoring Michael D. Kirby, AC, CMG, Justice of The High Court of Australia. The first part of the Monograph analyses the significant contributions that Justice Kirby has made as a compassionate champion of human rights and acknowledges what is styled as the Kirby Ethic which, in turn, is seen as the foundation for the body of work of the Justice as well as the moving force in his private life as well. Building upon a theory of transcendent idealism which interprets God's purpose as safeguarding the …

Neuroimaging Research Into Disorders Of Consciousness: Moral Imperative Or Ethical And Legal Failure, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

In this article I explore the ethical and legal implications of enrolling individuals with disorders of consciousness (DOC) in neuroimaging research studies. Many scientists have strongly emphasized the need for additional neuroimaging research into DOC, characterizing the conduct of such studies as morally imperative. On the other hand, institutional review boards (IRBs) charged with approving research protocols, scientific journals deciding whether to publish study results, and federal agencies that disburse grant money have limited the conduct, publication, and funding of consciousness investigations based on ethical and legal concerns. Following a detailed examination of the risks and benefits of neuroimaging research …

Review Of Jonathan Baron, Against Bioethics, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a short review of a recent book by Jonathan Baron, entitled "Against Bioethics."

Allies Not Adversaries: Teaching Collaboration To The Next Generation Of Doctors And Lawyers To Address Social Inequality, Elizabeth Tobin Tyler

Pro Bono Collaborative Staff Publications

Recent reports from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, as well as from other medical and legal educators, stress that professional training of doctors and lawyers focuses too narrowly on knowledge-based learning, and not enough on context-based problem solving, professionalism, and ethics. Tracing recent calls from both legal and medical educators to increase the teaching of ethics, social responsibility, the lawyer-client and doctor-patient relationship, and holistic problem-solving, this article offers a model of interdisciplinary medical-legal education focused on developing practitioners sensitive to the needs of diverse and disenfranchised clients and patients. It highlights a burgeoning medical-legal partnership model, …