This book examines patent law and policy in biotechnology across the full lifecycle of the patent, focusing on the patent bargain and the public interest. It considers the central issues of how to strike an effective balance of rights, and whether public interest is adequately safeguarded - two issues that are particularly important in areas of rapidly emerging technology. Expert contributors are brought together to explore patent eligibility in biotechnology, focusing on the fields of precision medicine, biofabrication and non-invasive prenatal testing. Chapters also explore the construction and coherence of exceptions to patentability,an examination of FRAND licensing in the context of the internet of medical things, and the possibility of using licensing to encourage or ensure the ethical use of patented technologies. With its carefully constructed analysis, this book will be an excellent resource for academic researchers, and students, in the fields of biotechnology law, pharmaceutical law and intellectual property law. It will also be useful for legal practitioners and policymakers, as well as charitable bodies and non-governmental organisations.

The contributors to this issue investigate the complex ways that policies of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have diffused through the states over seven years of implementation. When the ACA was passed in 2010, states were given the option to set up their own health care exchanges, expand their Medicaid programs, and reform both their local public health and their health care delivery systems. These reforms significantly impacted citizens' access to insurance. Contributors examine how local conditions account for variation in enrollment across states, analyze the evolution of Medicaid waivers in Republican-led states, show how early-adopting states affected later adopters, explore the role of public opinion in the diffusion of ACA policies, and argue for the importance of rhetorical framing when advocating in favor of the ACA. Contributors. Frederick J. Boehmke, Timothy Callaghan, Rena Conti, Bruce A. Desmarais, Colleen M. Grogan, Jeffrey J. Harden, Lawrence Jacobs, David K. Jones, Andrew Karch, Elizabeth Maltby, Julianna Pacheco, Aaron Rosenthal, Abigail A. Rury, Phillip McMinn Singer, Craig Volden

Whether you are a doctor, nurse, student, or otherwise interested reader, the stories here will help you to understand how medicine works and how medical error can happen. The lifelong process of learning that is a medical career requires healthcare workers to find a way to live through these setbacks without either becoming too adept at putting them 'down to experience' and forgetting their social significance, or 'burning out' and leaving medicine. The stories and discussions here present detailed narratives, analyses, and reflections on medical errors through actions, omissions, and misunderstandings. They offer a uniquely honest perspective on the social implications of medical error and will enable healthcare workers at all levels to analyse and learn from it without losing sight of its impact.

As neuroscience continues to reveal the biological basis of human thought and behavior, what impact will this have on legal theory and practice? The emerging field of neurolaw seeks to address this question, but doing so adequately requires confronting difficult philosophical issues surrounding the nature of mind, free will, rationality, and responsibility. In The Philosophical Foundations of Neurolaw, Martin Roth claims that the central philosophical issue facing neurolaw is whether we can reconcile the conception of ourselves as free, rational, and responsible agents with the conception of ourselves as complex bio-chemical machines. Roth argues that we can reconcile these conceptions. To show this, Roth develops and defends an account of free will that identifies free will with the capacity to respond to rational demands, and he argues that this capacity is at the foundation of our thinking about responsibility. Roth also shows how the mind sciences can explain this capacity, thus revealing that a purely physical system can have the kind of free will that is relevant to responsible agency. Along the way, Roth critiques a number of arguments that purport to show that the kind of reconciliation provided is not possible. Roth concludes that though we should rethink our legal system in important ways, both in light of his account of free will and what neuroscience is poised to reveal, neuroscience does not threaten the law's core commitment to responsible agency.

Two towering figures in the field of health care policy analysis, Theodore R. Marmor and Rudolf Klein, reflect on a lifetime of thought in this wide-ranging collection of essays published in the wake of President Obama's health care reform. Presented as a kind of dialogue between the two, the book offers their recent writings on the future of Medicare; universal health insurance; conflicts of interest among physicians, regulators, and patients; and many other topics.

We live in a world in which courts crucially shape public policy through constitutional adjudication. This is a book written for that world. It brings together a group of distinguished scholars from many disciplines to examine the Supreme Court's recent decision that statutes prohibiting doctors from helping their patients commit suicide may be constitutional. It offers a guide to that decision and to the larger issues it raises for citizens and scholars alike. It asks everyone's first question: What does the decision mean for today and tomorrow? It asks the lawyer's question: Is the Supreme Court's reasoning clear and convincing? It asks the doctor's question: How will the decision affect the decisions physicians make with their patients? It asks the ethicist's question: Will the decision conduce to wise and just decisions at the end of life? It asks the historian's question: How are we to understand the Court's work in light of our disturbing national experience with euthanasia? Ultimately, it asks the questions citizens need to ask in our new world: Is constitutional adjudication a good way to make public policy? Are courts well equipped--with experience, with doctrine, with wisdom--to make good policy? What role should courts have in making policy in a democracy? Has the Supreme Court made good public policy? What is the right policy for law at the end of life?
Carl Schneider is Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School.

Stalking has increasingly drawn the attention of mental health professionals, legal professionals and the public. This book provides up-to-date information on a variety of areas within stalking research, including practical approaches to stalking risk assessment and management, along with unique information related to celebrity stalking, cyberstalking, and forensic assessment.

This book,the second produced by the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group, is a collection of essays on the subject of law and the human body. As the title suggests, bodies and body parts are not only subject to regulation through formal legal processes, but also the meanings attached to particular bodies, and the significance accorded to some body parts, are aspects of broader cultural processes. In short, bodies are subjected to both lore and laws. The contributors, all leading academics in the fields of Law, Sociology, Psychology, Feminism, Criminology, Biology and Genetics, respectively, offer a range of interdisciplinary papers that critically examine how bodies are constructed and regulated in law. The book is divided into two parts. Part one is concerned with 'Making Bodies' and includes papers relating to transactions in human gametes, cloning, court-ordered caesarean sections, testing for genetic risk, the patenting of human genes and the social policy implications of the growth in genetic information. Part two is concerned with 'Using and Abusing Bodies'. It contains chapters relating to sexualities, sexual orientation and the law, sex workers and their clients, domestic homicide, religious and cultural practices and other issues involving children's bodies, the ownership of the body and body parts and the legal and ethical issues surrounding euthanasia.

Many advocates of euthanasia consider the criminal law to be an inappropriate medium to adjudicate the profound ethical and humanitarian dilemmas associated with end of life decisions. Euthanasia, Death with Dignity and the Law examines the legal response to euthanasia and end of life decisions and considers whether legal reform is an appropriate response to calls for euthanasia to be more readily available as a mechanism for providing death with dignity. Through an analysis of consent to treatment, living wills and autonomous medical decision making, euthanasia is carefully located within its legal, medical, and social contexts. This book focuses on the impact of euthanasia on the dignity of both the recipient and the practitioner while emphasizing the legal, professional, and ethical implications of euthanasia and its significance for the exercise of clinical discretion. It will provide a valuable addition to the euthanasia debate.

Dental hygienists and dental assistants need to be aware of current accepted legal processes related to such issues as infection control, insurance, malpractice, liability, and negligence. LEGAL AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR DENTAL HYGIENISTS AND ASSISTANTS provides them with strong theoretical and philosophical information concerning the legal, ethical, and management dilemmas that face the entire dental health team. Real-life examples with expert commentary and follow-up questions illustrate legal situations the dental hygienist or assistant may face.a consistent format for the most effective learning. Contains a case study at the beginning of each section to draw the student into a real-life situation that the hygienist or assistant could be faced with.Provides case study questions to stimulate students interest and promote greater discussion and understanding of difficult concepts. Includes a series of responses from experts in the field, providing a look at the cases through the eyes of professionals.Provides immediate clarification of vital legal terminology with Glossary terms and their definitions in the margins. Features author response to the case study, and answers to case study questions at the end of each section, so students can review vital information from the chapters and be sure theyve applied the information correctly to thecase study questions.Includes key words at the beginning of each chapter, so students can familiarize themselves with important legal terminology. Contains learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter to highlight important concepts the students need to comprehend.Provides a comprehensive glossary for students learning vital legal terminology.

Post-mortem computed tomography (PMCT) is increasingly used in forensic pathology practice in many jurisdictions. Such imaging has expanded the capacity to evaluate skeletal trauma improving the visualisation, documentation and presentation of forensic findings. Typically when deceased persons are located and exhibit evidence of trauma, forensic pathologist, anthropologists and radiologists base their interpretations of the mechanism of trauma on their experience and understanding of the biomechanics of fractures as well as recognisable patterns of injury. In order to augment this process, An Atlas of Forensic Skeletal Trauma presents a range of de-identified adult and child skeletal trauma cases that occur in medico-legal contexts where the cause of death and mechanism of trauma are recorded. An Atlas of Forensic Skeletal Trauma includes comprehensive photographs and PMCT images as well as descriptive text.

In recent years a lot of emphasis has been placed on obtaining consent for surgical and medical procedures to avoid litigation. This has become an integral part of clinical risk management and clinical governance. Problems relating to consent are the reason for a great proportion of medico-legal claims. Adequate, informed consent and better record keeping will avoid a lot of complaints and litigation. This book aims to help to understand the types of consent , how to obtain consent, and its medico-legal implications when things go wrong. It is designed to help in obtaining consent for common procedures undertaken in obstetrics and gynaecology. It is intended not only for doctors, but also for midwives, nursing staff, medical students and allied health professionals. And it is also particularly relevant for overseas doctors who are new and generally less familiar with the risk management, clinical governance and litigation system in the UK. Another use of this book is to provide an invaluable on the spot reference for various operations and their complications, ways and means of minimising risk, and dealing with difficult situations. The speciality of obstetrics and gynaecology is sued more frequently than any other. This book should help all those who are involved in the ob/gyn department to minimise the risk and danger of incurring such action.

Incorporating in-depth interviews, statistical data, and prior studies, Fielding illustrates how modern medicine is a victim of its own success. The historical record since the early 19th century shows that the rate of malpractice claims has increased as medicine developed new and more complex procedures. Fielding integrates macro- and micro-levels of analysis to explain how scientific medicine is inherently prone to adverse outcomes no matter how competent medical provides are and how patients often feel their personal experiences and views are marginalized during the course of their medical care. This combination makes it more likely that patients will sue when something goes wrong.

The so-called medical practice crisis is mostly the result of a system of health care that has promoted professional dominance and high-tech care. This system both shapes and is shaped by the daily clinical context in which patients, physicians, and other providers interact. The key policy implication would be to place greater emphasis on primary care and prevention rather than curative or high-tech interventions. For example, aggressive programs to ensure primary care for all, public health, occupational health, and accident reduction would go a long way to improve both the health of the population and reduce the rate of medical malpractice claims.

The healthcare delivery system in the United States is inundated with medical malpractice and liability issues, and there is no consensus about causes or solutions. Both physicians and an alliance of lawyers and consumer groups agree that there is a crisis, but physicians claim that the current medical malpractice system inheres in too many lawsuits while the lawyers argue that the current level of litigation is insufficient. Multivariate statistical methods are used in this much needed effort to investigate the effects of medical malpractice on various aspects of health care.

After introducing the various tort reforms that have been proposed and implemented by some states, the author analyzes the impact of these reforms on medical malpractice payment rates, claim payments, malpractice insurance, and in dental malpractice. The impact of malpractice liability on costs, licensure, disciplinary action, the supply of physicians, and the practice of defensive medicine are also covered. This is an essential guide for students in law, medicine, and health administration, as well as anyone who wants to research these issues for public policy.

The review and analysis of medical records is a very important part of any personal injury or malpractice case. This book provides an introduction to the law and basic principles as they apply to medical records. It provides a comprehensive list of guidelines for obtaining, reviewing, interpreting, and understanding the documents in a typical record. It offers a useful glossary, a selection of relevant websites, a review of state laws that deal with access to medical records, and an extensive list of abbreviations that may be encountered in clinical practice. While the author does not offer specific legal advice, he gives the reader all of the tools needed to research and utilize medical records. Laypersons, attorneys, paralegals, legal assistants, nursing professionals, medical practice administrators, risk managers, and law students will find this a very useful reference and guidebook.

As society struggles to cope with the many repercussions of assisted life and death, the evening news is filled with stories of legal battles over frozen embryos and the possible prosecution of doctors for their patients' suicide. Using an "institutional" approach as an alternative to the prevailing "rights" based analysis of problems in law and medicine, this study explains why society should resist the tendency to look to science and law for a resolution of intimate matters, such as how our children are born and how we die. Palmer's institutional approach demonstrates that legislative analysis is often more important than judicial analysis when it comes to issues raised by new reproductive technologies and physician-assisted suicide. A reliance on individual rights alone for answers to the complex ethical questions that result from society's faith in scientific progress and science's close alliance with medicine will be insufficient and ill-advised. Palmer predicts that the key role of the family as a societal institution will mean that questions of assisted reproduction will be resolved more in response to market forces than through legal intervention. However, he does support a strong role for legislatures in decisions involving the physicians' role in our deaths. These findings are based on the differing views of the Supreme Court justices in these matters: a tendency to protect family formation from state interference (as in abortion decisions), but support of a legislative obligation to control medicine (assisted suicide). According to Palmer, recent Supreme Court decisions on physician assisted suicide usher in a new era in how legal institutions will resolve biomedical dilemmas.

Students and professional nurses at any level of clinical practice will find this book to be a vital resource on the basic legal concepts and principles of malpractice, liability, and risk management, and their implications for the profession. The book also provides detailed strategies for dealing with these issues. The content is also highly relevant to practitioners in all other health care and legal disciplines that collaborate in the delivery of health care. Issues discussed include the expanding and evolving roles for professional nurses and the concomitant legal accountability and risk for liability, the increasing incidence of nurses named as defendants in malpractice lawsuits, anticipated changes in our health care delivery system, and breakthroughs in science and technology that will present new legal questions. The book also includes material on other important facets of today's nursing practice, including the growing phenomenon of tele-nursing, the essentials of malpractice insurance, and the legal significance of documentation and patients' medical records. It helps the reader identify the nurse at risk for a malpractice suit and the characteristics of the patient likely to sue. The appendices provide information on state laws concerned with access to medical records, a list of useful websites, a list of state boards of nursing, and a glossary of important terms.

While other books deal with the contemporary issue of the right to die, no attempt has been made to demonstrate substantially the historic nature of this question beyond the borders of the United States. Whiting demonstrates that the right to die controversy stretches back more than two thousand years, and he explains how current attitudes and practices in the U.S. have been influenced by the legal and cultural development of the ancient western world. This perspective allows the reader to understand not only the origins of the controversy, but also the different perspectives that each age has contributed to the ongoing debate.

Whiting discusses the development of legal rights within both western culture and the United States, then applies these developments to the question of the right to die. In an environment of public debate that features such emotional events as the exploits of Jack Kevorkian, the publication of how to suicide manuals, and the counterattacks of Right to Life groups, the United States is left with very few options.

Established in 1969, Cyril Wecht's Legal Medicine series has, in the words of a review of the 1982 volume, helped validate and develop the field which it reports. Legal Medicine's format assembles articles by experts dealing with a range of topics in the field of legal medicine and forensic science. The contributors provide balanced coverage of timely and practical issues.

A provocative presentation of medicolegal controversies within the American court system from the late 19th through the late 20th century. Medicine on Trial: A Handbook with Cases, Laws, and Documents chronicles the changing role of medicine in the American courtroom during the last 150 years. Integrating legal, historical, and medical perspectives, this comprehensive compilation tackles such public controversies as the "right to die" in the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, Dr. Jack Kevorkian and assisted suicide laws, reproductive rights cases such as "Baby M," and issues surrounding mental illness. The book gives special attention to medical personnel as expert witnesses in the courtroom, a challenge which calls into question deeply rooted notions of professionalism and ethics. A series of criminal and bioethics cases highlights the wide range of debates, while a lively discussion presents issues that may become even more controversial in the future, such as DNA testing and artificial reproductive technology. Includes entries on key people such as Thomas Noguchi, laws including the Frye Rule, and key concepts such as informed consent Provides a chronology of the most important events in the history of medicine in the courtroom, including the Baby M and duty-to-disclose cases

Located between three powerful phenomena, public health, the law and social stigma, methadone maintenance treatment attracts loyal advocates, vociferous critics and innumerable engaged onlookers. This book aims to examine the controversial approach to addiction, providing in the process a unique approach to literature on illicit drugs

This new book provides a clear and accessible analysis of the various ways in which human reproduction is regulated. A comprehensive exposition of the law relating to birth control,abortion, pregnancy, childbirth, surrogacy and assisted conception is accompanied by an exploration of some of the complex ethical dilemmas that emerge when one of the most intimate areas of human life is subjected to regulatory control. Throughout the book, two principal themes recur. First, particular emphasis is placed upon the special difficulties that arise in regulating new technological intervention in all aspects of the reproductive process. Second, the concept of reproductive autonomy is both interrogated and defended. This book offers a readable and engaging account of the complex relationships between law, technology and reproduction. It will be useful for lecturers and students taking medical law or ethics courses. It should also be of interest to anyone with a more general interest in women's bodies and the law, or with the profound regulatory consequences of new technologies.

Public policy surrounding the hotly debated issue of physician-assisted suicide is examined in detail. You ll find an analysis of the current legal standing and practice of physician-assisted suicide in several countries. Authors discuss the ethical principles underlying its legal and professional regulation. Personal narratives provide important first-hand accounts from professionals who have been involved in end-of-life issues for many years.

Daniel Callahan---whose cofounding of The Hastings Center in 1969 was one of the most important milestones in the history of bioethics--has written on an uncommonly wide range of issues over a long career. They have moved back and forth between clinical care of individual patients and the ethical problems of health care research and delivery. Through his many writings, four core problems have recurred in all of his work, and influence each of the others. What is health and how has its understanding been shaped by medical progress and the culture of medicine and society? What is progress, a deep value in modern health care and how should we judge it? What kinds of technological innovations that come out of the drive for progress are really good for us-and what do we do when there is a clash between individual good and social good in the use of expensive technologies, a problem now evident in the unsustainable high costs of health care? How should our understanding of the place of an inevitable death in all our lives, and its place in medicine, help us to better think of the goals of medicine and the goals of our life in seeking a good death? Those four questions have been with bioethics from its beginning and will remain with it for the indefinite future. They are the roots of bioethics.

A thorough exploration of an individual's right to bodily autonomy versus the state's power to regulate and control the bodies of its citizens. The Human Body on Trial asks the basic question: Who's in charge of your body-you or the authorities? Four narrative chapters examine key constitutional questions addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court over the past century concerning the power of the state to regulate the human body, placing the issues in historical context and examining the contemporary legal and medical knowledge that informed each decision. The book focuses on individual cases, such as Jacobson v. Massachusetts (compulsory vaccination), Buck v. Bell (forced sterilization), and Roe v. Wade (abortion), and discusses such controversial issues as AIDS testing and physician-assisted suicide. A special reference section includes court decisions and other primary documents. Timeline of major events in the evolution of the legal right of individual autonomy from the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 to the 2002 ruling in State of Oregon and Peter Rasmussen, et al. v. John Ashcroft regarding implementing Oregon's Death with Dignity Act Excerpts from key legal documents from the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision to the lesser known Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942) ruling by the Supreme Court overturning the mandated sterilization for three-time offenders convicted of certain felonies