After heart disease and cancer, the third leading cause of death in the United States is iatrogenic injury (avoidable injury or infection caused by a healer). Research suggests that avoidable errors claim several hundred thousand lives every year. The principal economic counterforce to such errors, malpractice litigation, has never been a particularly effective deterrent for a host of reasons, with fewer than 3% of negligently injured patients (or their families) receiving any compensation from a doctor or hospital's insurer. Closing Death's Door brings the psychology of decision making together with the law to explore ways to improve patient safety and reduce iatrogenic injury, when neither the healthcare industry itself nor the legal system has made a substantial dent in the problem. Beginning with an unflinching introduction to the problem of patient safety, the authors go on to define iatrogenic injury and its scope, shedding light on the culture and structure of a healthcare industry that has failed to effectively address the problem-and indeed that has influenced legislation to weaken existing legal protections and impede the adoption of potentially promising reforms. Examining the weak points in existing systems with an eye to using law to more effectively bring about improvement, the authors conclude by offering a set of ideas intended to start a conversation that will lead to new legal policies that lower the risk of harm to patients. Closing Death's Door is brought to vivid life by the stories of individuals and groups that have played leading roles in the nation's struggle with iatrogenic injury, and is essential reading for medical and legal professionals, as well as lawmakers and laypeople with an interest in healthcare policy.

Ten years have passed since the Mental Health Act (MHA) 2007 came into force in England. An amending statute, the Act reformed the MHA 1983 and reshaped the law governing the compulsory care and treatment of people suffering from mental disorders. Primarily driven by concerns about risk, it sought to remove legalistic obstacles to civil commitment and extend the law's coercive reach into the community. At the time of its introduction, the 2007 Act was written off as a retrograde step and a missed opportunity for radical, rights-focused reform. Despite this, little attention has been paid to its impact in the years since. Published to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the 2007 Act, this book offers a timely evaluation of mental health law and policy in England. It argues that the current MHA defies easy categorisation within any of the descriptive models which have customarily narrated the mechanics of civil commitment, namely 'legalism', 'new legalism', and 'medicalism'. It therefore makes the case for a new model - new medicalism - to account for the 2007 Act's enhancement of the discretion of mental health professionals for the express purposes of facilitating the management of situations of risk. In doing so, the book: critically examines the problems inherent in civil commitment frameworks organised around the concept of risk; explores the theoretical foundations of new medicalism; considers the challenges facing proponents of future reform in the era of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and, reflects on the 2007 Act's practical impact.

Market driven healthcare is massively divisive. Opponents argue that a competition approach to medical treatment negatively impacts on quality, while advocates point to increased efficiencies. This book casts a critical eye over both positions to show that the concerns over quality are in fact real. Taking a two part approach, it unveils the fault lines along which healthcare provision and the pursuit of quality would in certain cases clash. It then shows how competition authorities can only effectively assess competition concerns when they ask the fundamental question of how the concept of healthcare quality should be defined and factored into their decisions. Drawing on UK, US and EU examples, it explores antitrust and merger cases in hospital, medical and health insurance markets to give an accurate depiction of the reality and challenges of regulating competition in healthcare provision.

Few constitutional issues have been as contentious in modern times as those concerning school prayer and the public funding of religious schools. But as Steven K. Green surprisingly reveals in The Bible, the School, and the Constitution, the apogee of this debate was probably reached about one hundred and forty years ago, in the years between 1863 and 1876. As Green shows, the controversy over Bible reading in public schools captured national attention to an unprecedented degree, providing Americans with the opportunity to engage in a grand-and sometimes not so grand-public debate over the meaning of separation of church and state. Rarely in the nation's history have people from such various walks of life-Protestants and Catholics, skeptics and theocrats, nativists and immigrants, educators and politicians-been able to participate in a national discussion over the meaning of a constitutional principle. The debates of this period, Green shows, laid the foundation for constitutional arguments that still rage today.

The authors of these papers vary in age, nationality and professional background. They share a belief that all too often older people are not treated justly or fairly, and also a belief that this is particularly true with regard to a proper respect for their dignity as people and a proper allocation of medical and social resources. Their papers, in various ways, give evidence as to what is happening and arguments, based on philosophical ethics, as to why it is wrong. The authors also have a range of proposals, backed by argument and evidence, and drawing on factual material as well as philosophical argument, as to what could be done to improve the situation. This is a book for anyone, whether themselves elderly, looking after an older person, professionally involved in working with older people, or simply realising that one day they will be old, who wants to learn about what is wrong with the present situation and how it might be made better.

Offers an innovative plan to eliminate inequalities in American health care and save the lives they endanger Over 84,000 black and brown lives are needlessly lost each year due to health disparities: the unfair, unjust, and avoidable differences between the quality and quantity of health care provided to Americans who are members of racial and ethnic minorities and care provided to whites. Health disparities have remained stubbornly entrenched in the American health care system-and in Just Medicine Dayna Bowen Matthew finds that they principally arise from unconscious racial and ethnic biases held by physicians, institutional providers, and their patients. Implicit bias is the single most important determinant of health and health care disparities. Because we have missed this fact, the money we spend on training providers to become culturally competent, expanding wellness education programs and community health centers, and even expanding access to health insurance will have only a modest effect on reducing health disparities. We will continue to utterly fail in the effort to eradicate health disparities unless we enact strong, evidence-based legal remedies that accurately address implicit and unintentional forms of discrimination, to replace the weak, tepid, and largely irrelevant legal remedies currently available. Our continued failure to fashion an effective response that purges the effects of implicit bias from American health care, Matthew argues, is unjust and morally untenable. In this book, she unites medical, neuroscience, psychology, and sociology research on implicit bias and health disparities with her own expertise in civil rights and constitutional law. In a time when the health of the entire nation is at risk, it is essential to confront the issues keeping the health care system from providing equal treatment to all.

This new edition of the landmark text Law and Society exposes readers to the dominant theoretical perspectives and sociological methods that are used to explain the interplay between law and society. This twelfth edition continues to preserve Professor Vago's voice, while Steven E. Barkan's use of chapter outlines and summaries, learning objectives, key terms, and additional readings maintains the text's accessibility for today's readers. The book's foundational approach is brought fully up-to-date with current events and new studies throughout that illustrate how legal forces shape and influence society, and vice versa. These additions include: Updated data on trial and conviction data in federal district courts Updated data on sexual harassment of attorneys and new data on representation of women and people of color among law school faculty New discussions of legal issues arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. The twelfth edition of Law and Society is a cornerstone companion for one-semester undergraduate courses in Law and Society, Sociology of Law, and Introduction to Law offered within departments of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Political Science.

Through a uniquely multidisciplinary lens, Ethics and Vulnerable Elders: The Quest for Individuals Rights and a Just Society employs a highly principled approach to ethics and addresses current issues affecting vulnerable older adults. The book illuminates the current and future challenges facing older adult populations and provides effective frameworks for their resolution. The text features 19 chapters written by experts, which are then divided into four sections. The opening chapter introduces the framework for the book and addresses key concepts in ethics. Each of the four sections that follow addresses a particular category of vulnerability, namely compromised health, effective status, care arrangement, and abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Specific topics include cognitive impairment, physical disability, gender, sexual orientation, residential long-term care, self-neglect, correctional settings, victimization, and more. Each chapter includes a summary; case study; discussion of applicable principles of ethics, including autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice; resources for follow-up; and questions for further consideration. Ethics and Vulnerable Elders is an ideal resource for law school and graduate school programs with focus on gerontology, disability, social work, public health, elder and family law, and health care management.

Policies intended to shape student achievement and access at schools and colleges have changed significantly over the past decade. No Child Left Behind, Common Core, Race to the Top, data mining initiatives, Title IX gender equity, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, and executive actions on immigration illustrate key federal initiatives that have redefined standards, priorities, and practices within educational institutions. Similarly, state policies in terms of school funding, school choice, teacher qualifications, student bullying, and other measures have added another layer of complexity to the education law and policy dialogue particularly when addressing matters of education inequality. These emergent policies beget the question: how have these policies contributed to easing the effects of educational inequality? The purpose of this book is to examine the role of law as potentially countering or impeding desirable education reforms, and it calls on readers to consider how policymakers, lawyers, social scientists, and educators might best alter the course in an effort to advance a more just and less unequal educational system.

This book provides a nuanced picture of how diverse legal debates on the pursuit of economic development and modernization have played out in Latin America since independence. The opposing concepts of modernization theory and Dependency Theory can be seen to be playing out within the field of legal transformation, as some legal analysts define law as a closed, formal, rational system, and others see law as inseparable from economic, social and political change. Legal experiments have followed these trends, in some cases using legal instruments to guarantee classical, civil and political rights, and in others demanding radical transformation of existing legal structures. This book traces these debates across the key topics of: economic development and foreign investment; property; resource and power distribution in terms of gender and social policy. Drawing on a wide range of literature, the book adds complexity and color to our understanding of these themes in Latin America. This insightful exploration of comparative law within Latin America provides the tools needed to understand legal transformation in the region, and as such will be of interest to researchers within law, political sociology, development and Latin American studies.

This volume contains several analyses of health rights issues related to children. The various chapters provide an overview of this captivating area and may be of special interest to lawyers, health care professionals, ethicists, psychologists, judicial institutions, policy makers, interest groups, students and all others who are concerned with the children's rights perspective on health care.

The current U.S. Social Security Disability Income system (SSDI) grants benefits for those who cannot continue to earn an income through employment, due to chronic or terminal illnesses they may develop, that disables them physically or mentally. This is certainly a wonderful thing and it has saved many of its recipients from losing their homes and reasonable quality of life for their families and even from losing their lives early, by providing opportunity for continued medical care that would otherwise be impossible for them to obtain. With this said, there are also those policies practiced or enforced by the social security disability program for example that cause deserving applicants to be denied (the main subject of this book) and in some cases, less-deserving or undeserving applicants to be accepted by the same benefits program. I wish to point out some of these policies, within the chapters of this book but I endeavor to do so, without appearing to be casting dispersions on the SSDI system as a whole, which is a wonderful program and a privilege for disabled citizens. I sincerely believe it is extremely important for legitimately disabled Americans to be cared-for in a country that takes pride in helping those who are less-fortunate -- not those who are looking for a free ride or for a chance to scam the system but who are truly and sincerely in need. CHAPTER ONE: The Benefits of Being a Contributing American Citizen CHAPTER TWO: The Proper Screening of Disability Applicants CHAPTER THREE: Why I Applied for Social Security Disability CHAPTER FOUR: Why I Considered Canceling My Application for Social Security Disability before a Final Hearing It is my sincere hope that the words I offer in this book, contain proper perspective and that nothing contained herein, is perceived as unnecessary ranting on my part but that my thoughts will rather add some intelligent, logical perspective to this very difficult subject.

Every day, large numbers of altruistic individuals, in the absence of any legal duty, provide substantial and essential services for elderly and disabled people. In doing so, many such informal carers suffer financial burdens and other disadvantages. This book considers the scope for a "private law" approach to rewarding, supporting, or compensating carers, which is an increasingly vital topic in the context of an ageing population and the need for savings in public expenditure. Adopting a comparative approach, the book explores the recognition of the informal carer and his or her relationship with the care recipient within diverse fields of private law, from unjust enrichment to succession. Aspects of the analysis include the importance of a promise of a reward from the care recipient and the appropriate measure of any remedy. In considering the potential for expansion of a "private law" approach for carers, the book addresses the fundamental and controversial question of the price of altruism. (Series: Hart Studies in Private Law)

Genetic Transparency? tackles the question of who has, or should have access to personal genomic information. Genomic science is revolutionary in how it changes the way we live, individually and together, and how it changes the shape of society. If this is so, then - the authors of this volume claim - the rules that regulate genetic transparency should be debated carefully, openly and critically. It is important to see that the social and cultural meanings of DNA and genetic sequences are much richer than can be accounted for by purely biomedical knowledge. In this book, an international group of leading genomics experts and scholars from the humanities and social sciences discuss how the new accessibility of genomic information affects interpersonal relationships, our self-understandings, ethics, law, and healthcare systems. Contributors are: Kirsten Brukamp, Gabrielle Christenhusz, Lorraine Cowley, Malte Dreyer, Jeanette Erdmann, Andrei Famenka, Teresa Finlay, Caroline Fundling, Shannon Gibson, Cathy Herbrand, Angeliki Kerasidou, Lene Koch, Fruzsina Molnar-Gabor, Tim Ohnhauser, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, Benedikt Reiz, Vasilja Rolfes, Sara Tocchetti

Prohibitions against offensive conduct have existed for many years, but their extent and use was on the decline. Recently, however, several jurisdictions, including England and Wales, have moved to broaden the reach and severity of measures against incivilities. New measures include expanded targeting of unpopular forms of public conduct, such as begging, and legislation authorising magistrates to issue prohibitory orders against anti-social behaviour. Because these quality-of-life prohibitions can be so restrictive of personal liberties, it is essential to develop adequate guiding and limiting principles concerning State intervention in this area. This book addresses the legal regulation of offensive behaviour. Topics include: the nature of offensiveness; the grounds and permissible scope of criminal prohibitions against offensive behaviour; the legitimacy of civil orders against incivilities; and identifying the social trends that have generated current political interest in preventing incivilities through intervention of law. These questions are addressed by eleven distinguished philosophers, criminal law theorists, criminologists, and sociologists. In an area that has attracted much public comment but little theoretical analysis to date, these essays develop a fuller conceptual framework for debating questions about the legal regulation of offensive behaviour.

Dr. Scott W. Atlas examines the status of US health care under the Affordable Care Act and presents key reforms to meet the nation's significant health care challenges. Updated for 2020, the revised edition includes the facts about single-payer systems and the implications of Medicare for All proposals. Atlas's six-point incentive-based plan instills market-based competition, empowers consumers, and reduces government authority over health care. These reforms lower costs, stimulate innovation, and broaden access to quality care.

This monograph examines how European Union law and regulation address concentrations of private economic power which impede free information flows on the Internet to the detriment of Internet users' autonomy. In particular, competition law, sector specific regulation (if it exists), data protection and human rights law are considered and assessed to the extent they can tackle such concentrations of power for the benefit of users. Using a series of illustrative case studies, of Internet provision, search, mobile devices and app stores, and the cloud, the work demonstrates the gaps that currently exist in EU law and regulation. It is argued that these gaps exist due, in part, to current overarching trends guiding the regulation of economic power, namely neoliberalism, by which only the situation of market failure can invite ex ante rules, buoyed by the lobbying of regulators and legislators by those in possession of such economic power to achieve outcomes which favour their businesses. Given this systemic, and extra-legal, nature of the reasons as to why the gaps exist, solutions from outside the system are proposed at the end of each case study. This study will appeal to EU competition lawyers and media lawyers.

As technology becomes further engrained in the modern healthcare experience, an understanding of the impact created by the implementation of each new technology as well as the issues surrounding the today's medical experience is never more necessary. New Technologies for Advancing Healthcare and Clinical Practices chronicles the latest developments that are forming the future of medicine. This book introduces and explores the current technological innovations and applications of information systems and informatics in the healthcare industry while directing frameworks for advancing healthcare and clinical practices and research. Practitioners, educators, and researchers will find an international collection of case studies, surveys, and empirical research using qualitative approaches.

Many teachers in public schools find themselves increasingly unsure of what the law expects of them in the classroom. The general public and government regulators are holding them to higher and stricter standers of conduct, but their educational preparation has not kept up with the changing environment. Knowing Where to Draw the Line: Ethical and Legal Standards for Best Classroom Practice is an ideal guide for teacher education programs, offering a comprehensive account of the legal information that will arm teachers for legal survival in the classroom. Organized for both easy reference and thorough examination, Knowing Where to Draw the Line: Ethical and Legal Standards for Best Classroom Practice instructs teachers on how to deal with students, parents, administrators, and local communities, covering an exhaustive list of legal issues including: Sexual harassment, Discipline, Contract negotiations, Liability, and Medical Concerns. In addition, Knowing Where to Draw the Line: Ethical and Legal Standards for Best Classroom Practice highlights a number of court cases and uses hypothetical cases to further aid teachers in understanding these vital concerns.

This new addition to Hart Publishing's Landmark Cases series brings together leading figures in the field to discuss a selection of the most significant cases in medical law. These are cases which either signpost a new development for medical law, illustrate an important development of the law, or signpost likely future developments of the law. The cases are explored in their social and historical context to understand better what has influenced the development of the law. This collection provides a fascinating insight in the interaction of medical law and broader social changes to our bodies, illness and medical professionals.

Never before have two revolutions with so much potential to save and prolong human life occurred simultaneously. The converging, synergistic power of the biochemical and digital revolutions now allows us to read every letter of life's code, create precisely targeted drugs to control it, and tailor their use to individual patients. Cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and countless other killers can be vanquished,if we make full use of the tools of modern drug design and allow doctors the use of modern data gathering and analytical tools when prescribing drugs to their patients.But Washington stands in the way, clinging to outdated drug-approval protocols developed decades ago during medicine's long battle with the infectious epidemics of the past. Peter Huber, an expert in science, technology, and public policy, demonstrates why Washington's one-size-fits-all drug policies can't deal with diseases rooted in the complex molecular diversity of human bodies. Washington is ill-equipped to handle the torrents of data that now propel the advance of molecular medicine and is reluctant to embrace the statistical methods of the digital age that can. Obsolete economic policies, often rationalized as cost-saving measures, stifle innovation and suppress investment in the medicine that can provide the best cures at the lowest cost.In the 1980s, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence, until the FDA loosened its throttling grip and began streamlining and accelerating approval of life-saving drugs. The Cure in the Code shows patients, doctors, investors, and policy makers what we must now do to capture the full life-saving and cost-saving potential of the revolution in molecular medicine. America has to choose. At stake for America is the power to lead the world in mastering the most free, fecund, competitive, dynamic, and intelligent natural resource on the planet,the molecular code that spawns human life and controls our health.