Journal of Law and the Biosciences最新文献

In Box v Planned Parenthood, Justice Thomas wrote an impassioned concurrence describing abortions based on sex, disability or race as a form of 'modern-day eugenics'. He defended the challenged Indiana reason-based abortion (RBA) ban as a necessary antidote to these practices. Inspired by this concurrence, legislatures have increasingly enacted similar bills and statutes allegedly as a prophylactic to 'eugenics', its underlying discrimination, and the racial disparities eugenics caused. This article tests my hypothesis that this legislative focus on eugenics is largely performative, rather than evidence of true concern about the discrimination and disparities underlying eugenics. My research examined state laws in several areas that fall within narrow and broad understandings of eugenics to determine whether states with RBA bans have implemented policies to counteract eugenics more broadly. My analysis shows that they generally have not. Instead, the apparent motivation is to commandeer concerns about eugenics to restrict reproductive rights. This legislative mission is hypocritical, and it harms the very groups impacted by the eugenics movements-minorities, women, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, and immigrants. Ultimately, it has led us to Dobbs, which makes everyone vulnerable to the eugenics policies Thomas condemns by undercutting previous constitutional protections against eugenics.

Despite the non-recognition of same-sex relationships or marriage by the law, lesbian motherhood has become an emerging socio-legal issue in China. To fulfil their desires to reproduce and make a family, some Chinese lesbian couples adopt a `shared motherhood model' where one lesbian contributes an egg while her partner becomes pregnant through embryo transfer following artificial insemination with a donor's sperm. Because the shared motherhood model intentionally divides the roles of biological mother and gestational mother between lesbian couples, this has allowed legal controversies to emerge associated with the parenthood of the conceived child as well as custody, support of, and visitation of the child. There are two pending judicial cases involving a shared motherhood arrangement reported in the country. The courts have appeared reluctant to rule on them because Chinese law has not provided clear legal solutions to these controversial issues. They are highly cautious about delivering a decision not in line with the current legal position of non-recognition of same-sex marriage. Given little literature discussing Chinese legal responses to the shared motherhood model, this article aims to fill the gap by investigating the basis of parenthood under Chinese law and analysing the parentage issue concerning the different types of relationships between lesbians and children born of a shared motherhood arrangement.

The HeLa cell line was created in 1951 without consent from Henrietta Lacks, the person whose tissue sample was used. In 2021, the descendants of Henrietta Lacks sued a well-known biotechnology company for the profits it made from the HeLa cell line. In this article, ownership of the cell lines is investigated from a South African legal perspective by considering three possible contemporary scenarios bearing points of similarity to the Henrietta Lacks case. In the first scenario, informed consent is obtained to use a tissue sample for research and to commercialize the products of such research; in the second scenario, informed consent is materially deficient because of an honest mistake on the part of the research institution; and in the third scenario, informed consent is materially deficient due to willful disregard of the law on the part of the research institution. In the first two scenarios, ownership of the cell line created from the tissue sample would vest in the research institution, and the research participant would not have any legal action for financial compensation. However, in the third scenario, ownership of the cell line would vest in the research participant, who would be able to claim all profits made from trading the cell line. Whether the research institution acted in good faith is therefore a crucial determinant of the legal outcome.

Digitization in transplantation is not a new phenomenon. Algorithms are being used, for example, to allocate organs based on medical compatibility and priority criteria. However, digitization is accelerating as computer scientists and physicians increasingly develop and use machine learning (ML) models to obtain better predictions on the chances of a successful transplant. The objective of the article is to shed light on the potential threats to equitable access to organs allocated through algorithms, whether these are the consequence of political choices made upstream of digitization or of the algorithmic design, or are produced by self-learning algorithms. The article shows that achieving equitable access requires an overall vision of the algorithmic development process and that European legal norms only partially contribute to preventing harm and addressing equality in access to organs.

This paper explores the ethical challenges in deciding whether to vaccinate individuals lacking the decision-making capacity needed to provide informed consent during a public health emergency like COVID-19. The best interests standard ordinarily governs such decisions, which under the law in jurisdictions like England, Wales and Singapore takes into account the individual's past wishes and present preferences. However, in a public health emergency, the interests of third parties become more salient: those whom the unvaccinated individual might expose to infection have an interest in the individual's being vaccinated. While current mental capacity law has not been interpreted to take such public health considerations into account, we argue that such considerations are nevertheless ethically relevant, and can legitimately be weighed up alongside other considerations such as the preferences of the individual and impacts on their health. This is most relevant for individuals lacking decision-making capacity who have previously declined or presently resist vaccination. The public health impact of vaccination may in some instances be enough to outweigh preferences of the individual and justify providing vaccination against their past or present wishes.

Background: For gravely ill patients who have no treatment options and who are ineligible for clinical trials, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established the Expanded Access Program (EAP). Motivated by efforts to weaken FDA regulation and sold as providing greater access to experimental drugs, the federal Right to Try Act (RTT) was passed in 2017. It reduces FDA oversight by not requiring physicians to report safety data and foregoes approval of protocols by local institutional review boards.

Methods: This study explored the views of 17 neuro-oncologists from 15 different academic medical centers with varying experience with EAP and RTT using convenience sampling. We conducted semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis to identify emerging themes.

Results: Most oncologists were confused between the two pathways, had little familiarity with RTT, and had little knowledge about experimental medicine available through either pathway. Oncologists reported a preference of enrolling patients in clinical trials over off-trial preapproval pathways with scant data. As a result, oncologists revealed concerns over properly evaluating risks for their patients.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that neuro-oncologists need better resources and clearer mechanisms at their institutions to help navigate EAP and RTT in order to counsel patients interested in experimental medicine.

Considerable resources have been invested in research to identify pathogenic and likely pathogenic variants that cause morbidity and mortality and also in returning these results to patients. The public health impact and cost-effectiveness of these efforts are maximized when probands' relatives are informed of their risk and offered testing. However, such 'Traceback' cascade testing programs face multiple obstacles, including perceived or actual legal and regulatory hurdles. Here, using genetic cancer syndromes as a test case, we explore the contours of the Public Health Exception to the HIPAA Privacy Rule to assess whether it is a viable pathway for implementing a Traceback program. After examining the Privacy Rule as well as state laws and regulations for reportable conditions and genetic privacy, we conclude that this is not currently a viable approach for Traceback programs. We conclude by reflecting on ethical considerations of leveraging HIPAA's public health exception to disclose PHI directly to at-risk relatives and offering insights for how legal hurdles to such a Traceback program could be overcome, if desired.

Whether there should be restrictions for access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) is a matter of continuous medical, societal, and ethico-legal debate. One of the most controversial topics in this context is the use of parental age as a criterion to limit access to ART. Views are divided on whether there should be an upper age limit for one or both parents and on where such limits should be. Although this debate is centered around the issue of 'age' and although age-related limits are present in many legislations, the intrinsic ambiguity of the term `age' is largely overlooked. In this article, we build on gerontological, medical, and sociological literature on the concepts of 'age' and 'aging' to distinguish three conceptions of age that are relevant for ART regulation: the chronological, the biological, and the social-cultural one. Beyond mapping out these conceptions of age, we describe how they relate to ART and reproduction, and illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of relying on each of them as a basis for limiting ART access. Finally, we propose a template for defining legal age limits for ART access in the law, based on the refined understanding of the different conceptions of age that we outline and we discuss two potential objections to our proposal.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in which five justices voted to overturn Roe v Wade. Even before the final opinion issued, scholars and advocates had begun to consider legal strategies that might mitigate the decision's anticipated harmful consequences. One such strategy involves challenging state restrictions on Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved pregnancy termination drugs on preemption grounds. This article begins by exploring how these challenges might fare-considering both drug-specific restrictions and complete bans on abortion-arguing that there are compelling legal grounds on which courts should conclude that many state restrictions are preempted. Importantly, although these state restrictions have arisen within a larger debate about reproductive health care, this is far from the only area in which states seek to regulate prescription drugs. States have long regulated drugs in ways that diverge from FDA, arguably increasingly so in recent years. Accordingly, the article investigates the implications that preemption challenges in the abortion context may have for other areas of state drug regulation, making the case that the benefits of public health federalism need not be undermined by successful preemption challenges in the abortion arena.