Bioethics
Forum
Disability Law and the Case for Evidence-Based Triage in a Pandemic
When lifesaving medical treatments are scarce, disability law permits triage policies to consider patients’ probability of survival and post-treatment life expectancy. Evidence-based triage that considers these factors, rather than inaccurate stereotypes, can be not only legal and ethical, but conso…
Forum
Who Gets the Ventilator? Disability Discrimination in COVID-19 Medical-Rationing Protocols
The coronavirus pandemic has forced us to take the threat of rationing life-saving treatments seriously. Many health systems employ protocols that explicitly deprioritize people for these treatments based on pre-existing disabilities. This argues that such protocols violate the Americans with Disabi…
Comment
The “M” in MLP: A Proposal for Expanding the Roles of Clinicians in Medical-Legal Partnerships
Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) are a promising innovation in the delivery of legal services. Usually located in health care facilities, MLPs connect medical patients with lawyers in order to “detect, address and prevent health-harming social conditions” that medicine alone …
Forum
Oral Tradition and the Kennewick Man
In April 2016, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers confirmedthat the ancient human body discovered in 1996 near Kennewick, Washington,often referred to as the “Kennewick Man” or “The Ancient One,” is geneticallyrelated to modern-day Native Americans. Thisconfirmation ended a twenty-year-long struggle b…
Note
Patents, Paradigm Shifts, and Progress in Biomedical Science
114 Yale L.J. 661 (2004)
This Note applies the concept of paradigm shifts from the history and philosophy of science to describe how patents on biomedical research tools--inputs to basic research--can help advance scientific theory. Patents on research tools frustrate scientific norms of sharing and …