In the fifteen-year-long public saga of the Terri Schiavo case, one oftcited regrettable aspect of her health care noted in the media was her lack of advance care planning. The withdrawal of her gastrostomy tube was per the consent of her husband, Michael Schiavo, based on the substituted judgment of what she would have desired in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Her parents, the Schindlers, attempted to assert that ending treatment in her state (which they disputed as not being PVS violated her religious convictions.

Many people were upset by the protracted public scrutiny of this private matter - citing the Schindler's public angst, the indignity of Ms. Schiavo's protracted treatment, the interference of politicians, and the financial injustice of devoting so much time and money to this case. All these points are less meritorious than this simple fact: an incapacitated patient had a substituted judgment rendered by her spouse (who was not found to have a conflict of interest),with corroboration by other witnesses for this refusal, and without any compelling contradictory evidence from the once-competent patient.

The development of transplantation technology increasingly places before society a multitude of diverse, complex ethical and legal problems. The subject is the more complex because of the various divergent interests involved. There are the interests of the donor of organs, who has a right to protection of his legal position, and those of the patient in need of an often lifesaving organ. There are also the interests of the donor’s relatives, after his death, and those of the transplantation surgeons. The international dimension of transplantation technology makes the picture even more complicated. Though this article is devoted to the European situation, the problems are similar all over the world.

On February 2,2004,U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno issued the final order and judgment authorizing a settlement between the HMO CIGNA Healthcare and the physicians who treated patients covered by CIGNA, ending the companys involvement in the larger class action In re Managed Care Litigation, which stil includes eight other HMOs. The settlement, estimated by plaintiffs experts to be worth 1.3 billion, mandates changes in the companys business and disclosure practices, establishes a non-profit foundation dedicated to the promotion of high quality health care, and guarantees at least 70 million in payments to the physicians. Similar in scope to the settlement approved between the physician class and Aetna Healthcare in October 2003,the settlement could potentially set a new standard for transparency and physician involvement in billing practices; however, much depends on the outcome of the remainder of the class action, which is set to go to trial later this year.

A number of unique problems plague human research protection efforts at United States (US) State and Territorial Departments of Health (DOHs). The first problem is related to the number of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) operated by and Federalwide Assurances (FWAs) held by DOHs. The lack of these two essential regulatory human research protection program mechanisms points to a possible inadequacy of infrastructure at DOHs for protecting human subjects. The second and third problems are related to the use and interpretation of research protection laws and regulations at DOHs. Parsing public health activities into research or practice (1) can be vexing and (2) likely produces variability in (a) how individual DOHs make the determination between research and practice and (b) the outcomes of such decisions for the same or similar projects. A related problem is that DOH or Institutional Review Board (IRB) officials might misclassify public health practice activities as research (and vice versa), which can have costly, adverse consequences.

This Article explores the connections between disability and health justice in service of further tethering the two theories and practices. The author contends that disability should shift from marker of health inequity alone to critical demographic in the analytical and practical application of health justice. This theoretical move creates a more robust understanding of the harms of health injustice, its complexities, and, remedially, reveals underexplored legal and policy pathways to promote health justice.

New research and a government investigation have shed light on an anticompetitive practice called “Product Hopping” and specifically how it was employed in the case of the multiple sclerosis treatment glatiramer acetate beginning in 2014, which cost payers billions of dollars. We examine this case as well as a separate, impending instance of product hopping.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the vulnerability of the US generic drug supply chain to foreign production. Many policies have been proposed to mitigate this vulnerability. In this article, we argue that nonprofit drug manufacturers have the potential to make important contributions.

In law school we often focus on the importance of carefully crafting statutory and regulatory language. Textual ambiguities or sloppiness can significantly impair the efficacy of laws and regulations. Just as important as meticulous drafting, however, is the government’s ability to enforce its rules. In the absence of adequate enforcement resources, the government’s regulatory initiatives may well fail. The ability to promote public welfare depends as much on regulatory compliance as it does on the text of the regulations themselves.

In this paper we report findings from a commissioned report to the COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition on approaches to streamline multinational REC review/approval during public health emergencies. As currently envisioned in the literature, a system of REC mutual recognition is theoretically possible based on shared procedural REC standards, but raises numerous concerns about perceived inequities and mistrust.

Among the morass of critical issues impacting the results of the midterm elections in 2022 were core public health issues related to health care access, justice, and reforms. Collectively, voters’ communal health and safety concerns dominated outcomes in key races which may shape national, state, and local legal approaches to protecting the public’s health in the modern era.

This article explores innovative legal tools in built environment settings. Using tangible examples, the discussion will leverage the authors' expertise in the law, public health, and architecture to explore strategies in domestic and international settings to explain how healthy spaces make a direct public health impact on people's lives.

Across the nation, local, state, territorial, and tribal governments are engaged in successful efforts to protect and promote the health of their citizens by supporting healthy eating and active living initiatives. The ten essential services define a role for public health at multiple levels of influence (see Table 1). These functions provide a framework for obesity prevention that is consistent with the systems approach presented by the Institute of Medicine in “Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention.”

Governmental public health authorities can contribute to public health efforts to address obesity by monitoring prevalence of obesity and association risk factors, investigating the contributing factors, informing the public, and work with the citizens in their jurisdiction to develop solutions that fit the needs and sensibilities of the people.