A behind-the-scenes examination of the special court dedicated to claims that vaccines have caused harm The so-called vaccine court is a small special court in the United States Court of Federal Claims that handles controversial claims that a vaccine has harmed someone. While vaccines in general are extremely safe and effective, some people still suffer severe vaccine reactions and bring their claims to vaccine court. In this court, lawyers, activists, judges, doctors, and scientists come together, sometimes arguing bitterly, trying to figure out whether a vaccine really caused a person's medical problem. In Vaccine Court, Anna Kirkland draws on the trials of the vaccine court to explore how legal institutions resolve complex scientific questions. What are vaccine injuries, and how do we come to recognize them? What does it mean to transform these questions into a legal problem and funnel them through a special national vaccine court, as we do in the US? What does justice require for vaccine injury claims, and how can we deliver it? These are highly contested questions, and the terms in which they have been debated over the last forty years are highly revealing of deeper fissures in our society over motherhood, community, health, harm, and trust in authority. While many scholars argue that it's foolish to let judges and lawyers decide medical claims about vaccines, Kirkland argues that our political and legal response to vaccine injury claims shows how well legal institutions can handle specialized scientific matters. Vaccine Court is an accessible and thorough account of what the vaccine court is, why we have it, and what it does.

Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft Rechtsanwalte im Medizinrecht e. V. wurde 1986 von Rechtsanwalten gegrundet mit dem Ziel, Mitglieder auf medizinischem und medizinrechtlichem Gebiet weiterzubilden, an der Weiterentwicklung des Rechtsgebiets mitzuwirken und oeffentlich u. a. fur eine Verbesserung des Arzt-Patienten-Verhaltnisses einzutreten. Die Festschrift, die zum 25-jahrigen Jubilaum der Arbeitsgemeinschaft herausgegeben wird, enthalt Beitrage namhafter Autoren zum Thema Arzthaftungsrecht.

The volume presents the reports and discussions held at the conference of the a oeAssociation of German Constitutional Law Teachersa in Freiburg from October 3rd to October 6th, 2007.

The recent pandemic has clarified the overwhelming connection between the workplace and technology. With thousands of employees suddenly forced to work at home, a large segment of the workforce quickly received crash courses in videoconferencing and other technologies, and society as a whole took a step back to redefine what employment actually means. The virtual workplace is the blending of brick-and-mortar physical places of business with the advanced technologies that now make it possible for workers to perform their duties outside of the office. Trying to regulate in this area requires the application of decades old employment laws to a context never even contemplated by the legislatures that wrote those rules. This book explores the emerging issues of virtual work-defining employment, litigating claims, aggregating cases, unionizing workers, and preventing harassment-and provides clarity to these areas, synthesizing the current case law, statutory rules, and academic literature to provide guidance to workers and companies operating in the technology sector.

Why medicine adopts ineffective or harmful medical practices only to abandon them-sometimes too late. Medications such as Vioxx and procedures such as vertebroplasty for back pain are among the medical "advances" that turned out to be dangerous or useless. What Dr. Vinayak K. Prasad and Dr. Adam S. Cifu call medical reversal happens when doctors start using a medication, procedure, or diagnostic tool without a robust evidence base-and then stop using it when it is found not to help, or even to harm, patients. In Ending Medical Reversal, Drs. Prasad and Cifu narrate fascinating stories from every corner of medicine to explore why medical reversals occur, how they are harmful, and what can be done to avoid them. They explore the difference between medical innovations that improve care and those that only appear to be promising. They also outline a comprehensive plan to reform medical education, research funding and protocols, and the process for approving new drugs that will ensure that more of what gets done in doctors' offices and hospitals is truly effective.

A timely examination of how restrictive policies force women to travel both within and across national borders to access abortion services. Safe, legal, and affordable abortion is widely recognized as an essential medical service for women across the world. When access to that service is denied or restricted, women are compelled to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, seek backstreet abortionists, attempt self-induced abortions, or even travel to less restrictive states, provinces, and countries to receive care. Abortion across Borders focuses on travel across domestic and international boundaries to terminate a pregnancy. Christabelle Sethna and Gayle Davis have gathered a cadre of authors to examine how restrictive policies force women to move both within and across national borders in order to reach abortion providers, often at great expense, over long distances and with significant safety risks. Taking historical and contemporary perspectives, contributors examine the situation in regions that include Texas, Prince Edward Island, Ireland, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Eastern Europe. Throughout, they take a feminist intersectional approach to transnational travel and access to abortion services that is sensitive to inequalities of gender, race, and class in reproductive health care. This multidisciplinary volume raises challenging logistical, legal, and ethical questions while exploring the gendered aspects of medical tourism. A noticeable rollback of reproductive rights and renewed attention to border security in many parts of the world will make Abortion across Borders of timely interest to scholars of gender and women's studies, health, medicine, law, mobility studies, and reproductive justice. Contributors: Barbara Baird, Niklas Barke, Anna Bogic, Hayley Brown, Lori A. Brown, Cathrine Chambers, Ewelina Ciaputa, Gayle Davis, Mary Gilmartin, Agata Ignaciuk, Sinead Kennedy, Lena Lennerhed, Jo-Ann MacDonald, Colleen MacQuarrie, Jane O'Neill, Clare Parker, Christabelle Sethna, Sally Sheldon

Drawing from experience internationally, on recent and important developments in regulatory theory, and upon models and approaches constructed during the author's empirical research, this book addresses the question: how can law influence the internal self-regulation of organisations in order to make them more responsive to occupational health and safety concerns? In this context, it is argued that Occupational Health and Safety management systems have the potential to stimulate models of self-organisation within firms in such a way as to make them self-reflective and to encourage informal self-critical reflection about their occupational health and safety performance. This book argues for a two track system of regulation under which enterprises are offered a choice between a continuation of traditional forms of regulation and the adoption of a safety management system-based approach on the other. The book concludes with a discussion of the use of criminal and administrative sanctions to provide organisations with incentives to adopt effective Occupational Health and Safety management systems. The book proposes a wider range of criminal sanctions and sentencing guidelines to ensure employers receive sentencing discounts where they have introduced effective management systems.

Why does US health care have such high costs and poor outcomes? Dr. David S. Guzick offers this critique of the American health care industry and argues that it could work more effectively by rebalancing care, cost, and access. For decades, the United States has been faced with a puzzling problem: Despite spending much more money per capita on health care than any other developed nation, its population suffers from notoriously poorer health. In comparison with 10 other high-income nations, in fact, the US has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest rates of infant and neonatal mortality, and the most inequitable access to physicians when adjusted for need. In An Introduction to the US Health Care Industry, Dr. David S. Guzick takes an in-depth look at this troubling issue. Bringing to bear his unique background as a physician, economist, former University of Rochester medical school dean, and former president of the University of Florida Health System, Dr. Guzick shows that what we commonly refer to as the US health care "system" is actually an industry forged by a unique collection of self-interested and disjointed stakeholders. He argues that the assumptions underlying well-functioning markets do not align with health care. The resulting market imperfections, combined with entrenched industry stakeholders, have led to a significant imbalance of care, cost, and access. Using a nontechnical framework, Dr. Guzick introduces readers to the economic principles behind the function-and dysfunction-of our health care industry. He shows how the market-based approach could be expected to remedy these problems while detailing the realities of imperfections, regulations, and wealth inequality on those functions. He also analyzes how this industry developed, presenting the conceptual underpinnings of the health care industry while detailing its history and tracing the creation and entrenchment of the current federation of key stakeholders-government, insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, employers, and drug and device manufacturers. In the final section of the book, Dr. Guzick looks to the future, describing the prevention, innovation, and alternative financing models that could help to rebalance the priorities of care, cost, and access that Americans need. An online supplement on COVID-19 is available, as is a discussion guide for instructors. To access this supplemental material, please visit www.jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu.