bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Local Control of Recombinant DNA Research — Only for Accidents?
Authors: Christensen Ken 
Published: June 2007

Proposed federal legislation concerning recombinant DNA research attempts to restrict the ability of local governments to regulate the research. In March of 1978, the House Commerce Committee approved a bill that would “bar states and localities from setting their own standards over gene transplant technology.” Two weeks later, the House of Representatives Science, Research, and Technology Subcommittee approved a bill which would permit a state to regulate such researchonly when it is “necessary” to protect local health. The “necessary” standard usually requires strict proof that a regulated substance or activity will cause significant harm to public health. Under this standard a locality might have to wait for significant harm to occur before it could adopt regulations that are stricter than federal requirements.This anomaly presents the basic question of this article: Who should decide whether recombinant DNA research is a health hazard — the local or the federal government? This article will utilize a legal approach to answer the question, analyzing and weighing the issues presented by pertinent cases.
Section 504 Challenges Hospitals’ Care of the Deaf
Authors: Holzer James F. 
Published: June 2007

Much has been written and discussed this past year about the responsibility and obligation of hospitals to actively support and comply with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. which was designed to ensure that federally assisted programs and activities would be operated without discrimination on the basis of handicap. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) last year published comprehensive regulations implementing this controversial section of the law. Since almost all hospitals and health care institutions receive some form of Medicare, Medicaid or Hill-Burton Funds, this regulation is of special significance to the administrators of facilities who must now make both their physical plant and programs accessible to individuals suffering from a broad range of disabilities.In as much as a significant portion of the regulations relate to the development of plans to identify physical obstacles limiting accessibility and time schedules for making required modifications to buildings, many hospital officials equate Section 504 solely with the needs of individuals confined to wheelchairs or utilizing other such devices to assist in mobility
Who “Pulls the Plug:” The Practical Effect of the Saikewicz Decision
Authors: Dunn Lee J. 
Published: June 2007

As general counsel to one of the largest hospitals in the United States, I want to discuss a topic which affects 15 to 20 patients in our hospital every day, those on whom physicians have written what we call “DNR” orders (Do Not Resuscitate). Any large tertiary care hospital has to deal regularly with this problem with respect to patients who are terminally ill and how to treat such patients in a wide variety of circumstances. What are the physician's and the hospital's obligations to provide Care?On November 28,1977, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court handed down its opinion in a case that has caused tremendous repercussions in hospitals throughout the country regarding the withholding or withdrawal of life-support to terminally ill patients. At the time this opinion was handed down, the decisions of physicians and hospitals on what to do with respect to withdrawing such care were based primarily on one of four models.
The Future of Workers' Compensation
Authors: Stander Irvin 
Published: June 2007

Dissatisfied with state workers' compensation laws, business interests, labor unions, state compensation bureaus, self insurers, and private insurance carriers, despite their disparate interests, increasingly agree that such laws are in need of significant revision. But the call for reform has been heard before. In 1972, the National Commission on State Workmen's Compensation Laws (hereinafter referred to as the National Commission) reported to the President and Congress that “… the protection furnished by workmen's compensation to American workers presently is, in general, inadequate and inequitable.”Between 1972 and 1977 hundreds of state laws were enacted in response to the recommendations of the National Commission and the threat of federalization. Yet, in its 1977 report to the President and Congress, the Policy Group of the Interdepartmental Workers' Compensation Task Force concluded:
The Medicolegal History
Authors: Sagall Elliot L. 
Published: June 2007

Today's practicing physicians and attorneys can be assured of increasing contact with the legal and insurance issues stemming from the adverse consequences of a patient's injuries or illnesses. Mounting litigation involving alleged medical negligence as a cause of personal injury, and expanding social legislation and insurance programs which provide benefits to injured or disabled persons, their dependents, or their beneficiaries has required an increase in the medical problem issues encountered in processing and resolving contested claims. Evaluations of such claimants by physicians are essential to the proper handling of their legal and insurance claims.Medical evaluations performed specifically to provide information to the legal system and the expression of medical opinions formed after such evaluations constitute an area of medicine best termed Forensic Medicine. The traditional concept of “forensic medicine” was limited almost entirely to the medical investigation of the causes of death and the results of trauma, injury, and violent crimes. Forensic medicine practitioners were generally restricted to pathologists who performed medicolegal autopsies.
Fourth Circuit Limits §504 Employment Rights of the Handicapped
Authors: Hull Kent 
Published: June 2007

The United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Trageser v. Libbie Rehabilitation Center, Inc., has severely limited the use of §504 in combating employment discrimination, and the United States Supreme Court has refused to review the case. Fortunately, the Department of Justice, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (hereafter DHEW), the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, and the United States District Court for the Northern District of California disagree with the Fourth Circuit's finding.This decision is ironic considering the purpose of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Traditionally, the overriding objective of federal and state rehabilitation programs has been to put handicapped people to work. And there can be little doubt, from the legislative history of the Rehabilitation Act, that Congressional sponsors of the law viewed the probability of increased employment opportunities as a major justification for the civil rights provisions of the Act.
The Pregnant Minor: Contraception and Abortion under Canadian Law
Authors: Somerville Margaret A. 
Published: June 2007

Regulation of access to contraception or abortion by minors has been a major issue in many jurisdictions over the past decade. This article will investigate the current law in Canada and will enable comparisons to be drawn with the situation in other jurisdictions, particularly those in the United States in light of the United States Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the Hyde Amendment which restricts the use of federal funds for abortions.Some of the legal issues present are common to both contraception and abortion. However, because abortion is expressly regulated by the Criminal Code of Canada, there are also significant differences. The two major issues are the legality of the procedures themselves and consent. These questions are both separate and related: they are separate because the legality of a medical intervention must be looked at apart from consent, and related because consent is one of the factors upon which legality depends.
Reproductive Freedom and the Prevention of Birth Defects: A New and Developing Standard of Medical Care
Authors: Grumet Barbara R. 
Published: June 2007

The past fifteen years have witnessed parallel advances in law and medicine which enable physicians and future parents to prevent the birth of many handicapped children. The right of reproductive freedom has been included as one facet of the constitutionally based right to privacy. Medical science has developed and refined techniques for detecting parental carriers of many handicapping conditions, as well as means to determine whether a particular fetus is afflicted. As these advances have progressed, a sort of mutual dependency has evolved: The parents' right to decide whether and when to have children cannot be fully exercised unless parents have the benefit of available medical knowledge. Nor can advances in detecting birth defects be fully implemented without legally sanctioned means of preventing or terminating pregnancy.Along with these advances has come increased litigation over the issue of the standard of care a physician owes his or her pregnant patients. Several parents who have given birth to severely handicapped children have attempted to impose an additional duty on physicians: that is, to warn parents of the risks of having a handicapped child, and/or to diagnose the handicap in time for the parents to terminate the pregnancy.
Legal Criteria for Orders Not to Resuscitate: A Response to Justice Liacos
Authors: Robertson John 
Published: June 2007

Justice Liacos's comments on the Saikewicz decision should end much of the debate that has swirled around the scope of this landmark case, and I commend MEDICOLEGAL NEWS or publishing his remarks. However, two aspects of the article deserve further comment.First, it seems unfair to criticize lawyers for not immediately reading the case the way Justice Liacos now says it should have been read. While the opinion in Saikewicz is reasonably clear about the substantive rights of incompetent patients, it is imprecise about the procedures to be followed in implementing those rights. For example, in discussing the role of the probate court in such cases, the broad language used in the decision could be read as requiring a judge to review all treatment decisions involving incompetent patients.
How to Make the Massachusetts Patients’ Bill of Rights Work
Authors: Annas George J. 
Published: June 2007

At one point in Edgar Allan Poe'sNarrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket,Pym, who has stowed away in the hold of a whaling vessel, believes he has been abandoned and that the hold will be his tomb. He expresses sensations of “extreme horror and dismay,” and “the most gloomy imaginings, in which the dreadful deaths of thirst, famine, suffocation, and premature interment, crowded in as the prominent disasters to be encountered.”It is probably uncommon for hospitalized patients to feel as gloomy as Pym. Nevertheless, installed in a strange institution, separated from friends and family, forced to wear a degrading costume, confined to bed, and attended to by a variety of strangers who may or may not keep the patient informed of what they are doing, the average patient is intimidated and disoriented. Such an atmosphere encourages dependence and discourages the assertion of individual rights.
Limiting Davis: Educating Handicapped People for Health Care Professions
Authors: Hull Kent 
Published: June 2007

The Davis decision, which allowed a federally-assisted college to exclude a severely hearing impaired woman from its registered nurse training program, provoked great concern among handicapped people and their advocates. Institutions of higher education also have reason for dissatisfaction with the decision since it fails to provide sufficient guidance for those federal recipients to measure their compliance with section 504. In a letter to college presidents dated October 5, 1979, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Patricia Roberts Harris sent forth the department's official statement concerning the decision.The letter indicates a middle-of-the-road approach to Davis and HEW's future enforcement of section 504: it views the Supreme Court's decision as consistent with regulations adopted by the Department to implement section 504. While recognizing that colleges can establish legitimate academic requirements, it states that they must demonstrate the necessity and legitimacy of policies which result in the exclusion of handicapped people.
Disclosure of Injury and Illness: Responsibilities in the Physician-Patient Relationship
Authors: LeBlang Theodore R. 
Published: June 2007

In one of his few decisions addressing the interface of law and medicine, Oliver Wendell Holmes observed that, The patient has no more right to all the truth than he has to all the medicine in the physician’s saddlebag. He should only get so much as is good for him.During the last 60 or so years, the question of how much medical information is indeed good for the patient has been the subject of innumerable lawsuits. From this plethora of litigation, a clear common law trend which favors maximum disclosure of information has become evident. Relying upon the fiduciary nature of the physician-patient relationship, the courts have imposed upon the physician a duty to inform a patient fully regarding the condition of his or her body. It is appropriate, therefore, to examine various exemplary case decisions in an effort to portray effectively the nature and scope of the physician’s rights and responsibilities in this context.
The Physician's Right to Due Process in Public and Private Hospitals: Is There a Difference?
Authors: Southwick Arthur F. 
Published: June 2007

This article will discuss the rights of a licensed physician to acquire and retain a hospital medical staff appointment. The focus of the discussion will be the relationship between the independent fee-for-service private practitioner and the community general hospital. The relationship of the organized medical staff to both the hospital and the individual doctor will also be clarified. The hospital involved this discussion may be owned by a governmental unit and hence identified as a “public hospital,” but more likely it will be aprivate, non-profit charitable corporation and will be referred to as a “private” hospital. Specifically, this article will explore the differences, if any, between a physician's rights vis-a-vis the public hospital and his or her rights when a private hospital is involved.Excluded from this analysis are situations where the doctor is an employee of a hospital or health care institution. Also excluded are cases involving hospitals which limit their service to particular patients (e.g., the mentally ill or children), and university-owned teaching hospitals that impose a faculty appointment in the medical school as a pre-requisite to staff privileges.
Vox Clamantis in Deserto:Do YouReallyMean What You Say inSpring?
Authors: Dunn Lee J. , Ator Nancy E. 
Published: June 2007

Probably the most vexing result of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's [SJC] opinion in theSpringcase is that judges, lawyers, and others faced with similar problems in other jurisdictions are likely to read the opinion and commend the Supreme Judicial Court for its efforts. Yet, once the background of this case is known, or once one reads the opinions of the Court of Appeals or of the Probate Court, or the briefs submitted by the parties and theamici curiae,the inadequacies of the opinion become apparent. In our view, theSpringdecision works a disservice on all those both within and without Massachusetts who seek guidance from the courts as they attempt to resolve similar cases.The Illinois Association of Hospital Attorneys [IAHA], among others, filed a briefamicus curiaein theSpringcase for three reasons: First, to ask that the SJC reconsider the position it had taken inSaikewicz,and thereby to alleviate some of the misunderstanding caused by that decision. Second, to ask the court to reconsider whether the tests it enunciated inSaikewiczwere truly workable in the contemporary health care delivery system.
Hospital Corporate Liability: The Walls Continue to Tumble
Authors: Zaremski Miles J. 
Published: June 2007

Today's hospitals and health care facilities are being increasingly subjected to pressures to monitor the quality of the health care provided in their institution. One vehicle is the courts which, utilizing the doctrine of hospital corporate liability, have imposed a duty upon the hospital to use reasonable care in the selection and maintenance of physicians on its medical staff. This article will discuss three different approaches from three different states.The first case is Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hospital, decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in January 1981. In its decision, the court sought to answer two questions: “Does a hospital owe a duty to its patients to use due care in the selection of its medical staffand the granting of specialized surgical (orthopedic) privileges?;” and second, “What is the standard of care that a hospital must exercise in the discharge of this duty to its patients…?”
The Application of Reasonable Prudence to Medical Malpractice Litigation: The Precursor to Strict Liability?
Authors: Peters Brian M. 
Published: June 2007

Recently, the California Supreme Court found an established medical standard of care to be inadequate and replaced it with a judicially constructed medical standard of practice premised on the rule of reasonable prudence. California thus joined the State of Washington and became the second state to sanction the invocation of reasonable prudence in the fashioning of judicially formulated medical standards of care.As this article will illustrate, the Supreme Courts of California and Washington are, in a narrow class of cases, imposing a greater duty of care on physicians than previously mandated by the medical profession. These courts are impliedly stating that although the physicians complied with the particular standard of care within their profession, they could have better protected their patients had they pursued a more prudent course of conduct. Moreover, in choosing between the innocent and damaged plaintiff and the equally innocent and compliant physician, the courts have reasoned that the plaintiff should not have to bear the risk of loss and, consequently, have imposed liability on the physician.
Iatrogenesis and Medical Error: The Case for Medical Malpractice Litigation
Authors: Furrow Barry R. 
Published: June 2007

Discussions of medical malpractice seem to end up at either of two extremes: the trial lawyer's view that injured patients deserve compensation, with the treating physician the best source; and the doctor's view that such suits unfairly penalize judgmental errors while raising the costs of practicing medicine. The parties to this debate make different assumptions about the nature, purpose, and likely impact of malpractice suits; as a result, the issues are muddied rather than clarified. This article suggests that, viewed in light of recent studies of iatrogenic illness in hospital settings, malpractice litigation may help rather than hinder the quality of medical care delivered.latrogenesis, defined as the undesirable side-effects of medical interventions, is not a new phenomenon. The major study undertaken by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1973 noted that a substantial percentage of adverse medical outcomes occur as the result of treatment. Others have concluded that many surgical deaths are avoidable.
Nursing Ethics, Physician Ethics, and Medical Ethics
Authors: Veatch Robert M. 
Published: June 2007

The term “nursing ethics” is controversial. Some insist that nursing ethics is a unique field posing issues that cannot be understood fully by adapting the professional ethics of physicians. They insist that the term “nursing ethics” connotes the uniqueness of the moral problems that nurses face in the health care setting.On the other hand, others argue against the term. Some suggest that it is demeaning and has somewhat the connotation of watered-down ethics —the flavor of such textbook titles as anatomy for nurses or pharmacology for nurses Others critical of the term “nursing ethics” argue that there is really very little that is morally unique to nursing. The same ethical principles and the same moral issues emerge in the health care setting whether one is a physician, nurse or patient. This article puts forth the view that nursing ethics is a legitimate, if very limited, term referring to a field that is a sub-category of medical ethics.
Prescribing Approved Drugs for Nonapproved Uses: The Pharmacist’s Potential for Liability
Authors: Mazzucca Gerald A. 
Published: June 2007

Drugs are frequently used for purposes not included in the manufacturers’ package inserts which are approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A current example involves the industrial solvent dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), which is approved for human use only for the treatment of chronic interstitial cystitis, but is reportedly widely sold for the nonapproved purpose of arthritis treatment. The placing of this product in the pharmacy for sale to consumers could constitute the basis for an action by FDA against the pharmacy. This article will discuss the potential legal ramifications when a pharmacist dispenses an approved drug for a nonapproved use.The question of a pharmacist’s liability for dispensing approved drugs for nonapproved uses has not yet been litigated. Courts have, however, held physicians liable for improperly prescribing drugs for nonapproved uses, as discussed by Professor Kapp in the preceding article. The premise of this article is that the pharmacist is potentially liable, and that the basis of this liability may be analogized to that of the physician’s liability.
Failure to Use Siderails: When is it Negligence?
Authors: Greenlaw Jane 
Published: June 2007

Nurses frequently wonder about the legal aspects of using siderails to prevent patient falls from bed. Questions arise as to when siderails are clinically indicated; whether a patient may refuse the use of siderails; whether, when a patient does fall from bed, the fall resulted from negligent failure to use siderails; and whether a decision to use siderails is a medical or nursing judgment. This article examines the legal issues involved in the use of siderails and provides some recommendations for the use of siderails and other restraints.Liability for a patient's fall from bed is imposed according to the general principles of the law of negligence—when the patient-plaintiff can demonstrate that a particular act or omission on the part of the defendant (usually the hospital, through its nursing staff) did not conform to the accepted standard of care, and that this deviation resulted in harm to the patient.
Medicolegal History: A Review of Significant Publications and Educational Developments
Authors: Frey Emil F. 
Published: June 2007

The development of the medicolegal field in the United States has followed an uneven course, marked by successions of rich and fallow periods. By the beginning of the nineteenth century a number of universities had qualified professors of medical jurisprudence on their faculties, and the field appeared to be in full flower. Yet, in 1876. a well-known American medical professor and dean, Stanford Emerson Chaille, wrote with some bitterness of the deplorable state of medical jurisprudence in this country. Today, there is considerable interest in the field, but the comparative dearth of medicolegal instruction at medical schools remains an issue.This article briefly traces the development in the United States of the medicolegal field, which for our purposes encompasses the legal questions concerning medicine and allied sciences Selected advances in education and publishing are highlighted; lastly, the article reviews those problems which appear to have prevented the full development of this field.