Washington Law Review最新文献

Two sets of federal regulations, the "Common Rule" and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, govern human subject research that is either federally-funded or involves FDA regulated products. These regulations require, inter alia, that: (1) researchers obtain informed consent from human subjects, and (2) that an Institutional Review Board (IRB) independently review and approve the research protocol. Although the federal regulations do not provide an express cause of action against researchers, research subjects should be able to bring informed consent and malpractice actions against researchers by establishing a duty of care and standard of care. Researchers owe human subjects a duty of care analogous to the special relationship between physicians and patients. The federal regulations should provide the minimum standard of care for informed consent in human subject research, and complying with them should be a partial defense. In contrast, expert testimony should establish the standard of care for researcher malpractice, and IRB approval should be a partial defense.

Heated debates often surround the introduction of an important new technology into society, as exemplified by current controversies surrounding human cloning and privacy protection on the Internet. Underlying these controversies are disruptions to central socio-legal values caused by these new technologies. Whether new technologies will eventually be accepted by society is often contingent on the reaction of the legal system. This mandates the formulation of a conceptual framework for understanding and structuring the way the law should react in cases surrounding the adoption of new technologies. By using the case study of artificial insemination this Article develops the tools for structuring the legal role in the acceptance process of new technologies. The three-century controversy surrounding the innovation of artificial insemination results from the innovations' disruption of the socio-legal value of the family. Artificial Insemination--although invented in the eighteenth-century--was rarely used until the 1930s, and only legalized in the 1960s. Its application to surrogacy and its use by unmarried women extends the controversy into the twenty-first century. The case study demonstrates the nature of the relationship among the technological, social and legal acceptance processes of new technologies, and analyzes the legal acceptance debate. The conceptual framework produced is useful in understanding and structuring the legal role in current debates surrounding the introduction and acceptance of new technologies.

Unintended pregnancy is a serious problem in the United States. Most private insurance plans do not pay for contraception even though they pay for other prescription drugs and devices. This Article argues that this pattern constitutes sex discrimination and is prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. It discusses the reasons this issue has been neglected and suggests ways federal and state officials might remedy this common form of gender discrimination.

The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) does not state whether it prohibits discrimination against individuals who are infected with HIV but asymptomatic. Some courts have held that the language of the ADA is unambiguous and does not cover asymptomatic HIV as a disability because the virus is not an "impairment" that substantially limits a "major life activity." Other courts have looked behind the statutory language and found that Congress intended to protect asymptomatic individuals with HIV because the virus impairs one's ability to procreate and/or engage in sexual relations. This Comment argues that asymptomatic individuals with HIV are indeed protected under the ADA, but that the analytic framework thus far employed by the courts is flawed. Asymptomatic HIV is a protected disability not because it is independently debilitating, but because the prejudices and fears of other may prevent HIV-infected persons from fully participating in society. The ADA was enacted to prevent exactly this type of discrimination.