Oct
21
What’s Height Got to Do with It?
October 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Anyone who has taken the time to stroll around the arms and armor section of an art museum or who has carefully studied the size of a bed in a historical home easily comes to the same conclusion: the average person was a lot shorter in the past than he is now! A suit of [...]
Oct
15
Pity the Soda Tax
October 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Amid the general wrack and roil of the debate over healthcare, a dozen smaller dramas have played out. The one I’ll be writing about today seems all but finished, and it proceeded along the rote lines of a typical legislative tragedy. To wit; a good idea is put forward, high-minded politicians dutifully offer it guarded [...]
Apr
20
What’s So Great About Organic Food ?
April 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment
In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on healthy eating, and particularly about eating organic foods. Most organic food purchasers do so for one of two reasons. They believe either that organic food is more nutritious or that is better for the environment. There continues to be conflicting evidence about whether [...]
Apr
9
Opening the Door to a New Medical Marijuana Policy
April 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment
While marijuana continues to be illegal under federal law, thirteen states, including first California in 1996 and most recently Michigan in 2008, have adopted laws legalizing the medical use of marijuana. This conflict between federal and state policies was brought into sharp focus during the Bush administration, which authorized the Drug Enforcement Agency to raid [...]
Feb
17
A CON Gone Bad
February 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Last week, William and Mary held its annual Benjamin Rush Symposium, at which selected students presented papers addressing issues in health law and bioethics. Among the many well-researched and articulate presentations, one that was particularly enlightening (in that it addressed a topic directly relevant to our daily lives yet little known among most of us) was [...]
Feb
3
Access Denied? The Fight for Corporate Accountability
February 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Our chapter recently screened the documentary “Access Denied? The Fight for Corporate Accountability”, which features the tragic story of Diana Levine.
Levine, a professional musician, was suffering from migraine’s and sought relief at a hospital. Due to faulty labeling on her medicine, Levine ended up having to get her arm amputated. A completely preventable error ruined [...]
Nov
20
Religion in Hospital Rooms, Making the Call on Life Support and Death
November 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment
On Monday, a 12-year-old boy who had been kept alive on life support died in a D.C. hospital. Motl Brody had aggressive brain cancer and his family grabbed the media’s attention when they began working through the judicial system to keep him on life support. His doctors declared Motl legally dead two weeks ago when [...]
Nov
12
Death with Dignity
November 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
In a historical election that stirred political excitement in unprecedented ways, it was easy to overlook some of the potentially groundbreaking state measures that made it on the ballot. One such measure was Initiative 1000, Washington’s Death with Dignity Act (PDF), legalizing physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill, competent adults, medically predicted to die within six months.
Physician [...]
Oct
21
Should Judges Decide Who Can Reproduce?
October 21, 2008 | 2 Comments
Last month, state Judge Charlie Baird of Travis County, Texas, decidedly took the matter of reproduction rights into his own hands. After sentencing a 20-year old Hispanic woman to 10 years of probation for child abuse, he ordered her, as a condition of probation, to not have any more kids. The woman, Felicia Salazar, who [...]
Jul
30
Defining a Person
July 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
“Personhood” is defined as a fertilized egg, created at the moment of conception. Or at least it will be in Colorado, if voters pass Colorado’s Amendment 48 this November. The Amendment, which has completed the approval process for the fall ballot, reads in full (PDF): “As used in … the state Constitution, the terms ‘person’ [...]
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