Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics最新文献

Balancing on a tightrope twenty feet above the ground is outside the comfort zones of many health law professors. Being there forces you to consider in new ways yourself, your skills, and your surroundings. Fears arise, and yet you must still act. And you must trust that the person who offered you this opportunity cared about you and your well-being, and that they would ensure there was a way to get from where you began to the other side.

It was a privilege to attend the symposium Defining Health Law for the Future, and join with so many of Georgia State University College of Law Professor Emerita Charity Scott's colleagues and friends, supporters, former students, mentees, and presenters. It was a symposium that fittingly served as a tribute to Charity and the remarkable impact she had on the many communities she touched. To the Harrell/Scott family - thank you so much for helping us celebrate Charity and her work.

This is how Georgia State University College of Law Professor Charity Scott introduced the concept of mindfulness to numerous law students and lawyers. Aware that her skeptical, mind-driven audience needed a clear definition for a practice that seemed curious, at best, and esoteric, at worst, she immediately gave us the very lawyerly task of "pars[ing] each of these phrases to understand their importance and relevance to the legal profession"² and applying them to our own experience of studying or practicing law. Using scientific evidence, she described the benefits of mindfulness and then invited us to try it and decide for ourselves. Charity was a superb teacher, who knew how to impart knowledge skillfully, and a brilliant lawyer, who could present and defend her case exceptionally well. In fact, "Charity Scott owned the subject matter so deeply that she was able to engage lawyers who otherwise would never have given the concept of mindfulness any credence in a million years. In a way that's hard to describe, she didn't brook any resistance on the topic and, as a result, was able to move the needle on well-being for lawyers at a time when, as far as I can tell, she was the only one doing the lifting," reflects Lynn Garson, health care attorney and mental health advocate. But I believe Charity Scott's true mastery and impact came from her embodiment of mindfulness itself. In her presence, mindfulness ceased to be a mere concept, but instead became her way of being that illuminated her words and actions, nourished her relationships, and changed lives.

The case of clinical trials for convalescent plasma during COVID-19 illustrates important lessons for realizing public sector approaches to biomedical research and development. These lessons, centering on mission, transparency, and spillover effects, can be translated to wider efforts to develop a "public option" for clinical trials.

Patients and physicians do not know the cost of medical procedures. Opaque medical billing thus contributes to exorbitant, rising medical costs, burdening the healthcare system and individuals. After criticizing two proposed solutions to the problem of opaque medical billing, I argue that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should pursue a rule requiring that patients be informed by the physician of a reasonable out-of-pocket expense estimate for non-urgent procedures prior to services rendered.

Secondary use of clinical data in research or learning activities (SeConts) has the potential to improve patient care and biomedical knowledge. Given this potential, the ethical question arises whether physicians have a professional duty to support SeConts. To investigate this question, we analyze prominent international declarations on physicians' professional ethics to determine whether they include duties that can be considered as good reasons for a physicians' professional duty to support SeConts. Next, we examine these documents to identify professional duties that might conflict with a potential duty of physicians to support SeConts.

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) proved to be critical points of access for people of color and other underserved populations during the COVID-19 pandemic, administering 61% of their COVID-19 vaccinations to people of color, compared to the 40% rate for the overall United States' vaccination effort. To better understand the approaches and outcomes of FQHCs in pandemic response, we conducted semi-structured interviews with FQHC health care providers and outreach workers and analyzed them using an inductive qualitative methodology.

This paper challenges historically preconceived notions surrounding a minor's ability to make medical decisions, arguing that federal health law should be reformed to allow minors with capacity as young as age 12 to consent to their own Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC)-approved COVID-19 vaccinations. This proposal aligns with and expands upon current exceptions to limitations on adolescent decision-making. This analysis reviews the historic and current anti-vaccination sentiment, examines legal precedence and rationale, outlines supporting ethical arguments regarding adolescent decision-making, and offers rebuttals to anticipated ethical counterarguments.

Following from sweeping law reforms across the global health landscape, there is a need to prepare the next generation to advance global health law to ensure justice for a healthier world. Educational programs across disciplines have increasingly incorporated the field of global health law, with new courses examining the law and policy frameworks that apply to the new set of public health threats, non-state actors, and regulatory instruments that structure global health. Such interdisciplinary training must be expanded throughout the world to prepare future practitioners to strengthen global health law - ensuring a foundation for global health in legal studies and law and global health studies. Meeting this imperative for global health law teaching - establishing academic courses and textbooks on global legal responses to shared health threats - will be necessary to support students to address the global health challenges of the future.