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Transplant Tourism: The Ethics and Regulation of International Markets for Organs
“Medical Tourism” is the travel of residents of one country to another country for treatment. In this article I focus on travel abroad to purchase organs for transplant, what I will call “Transplant Tourism.” With the exception of Iran, organ sale is illegal across the globe, but many destination countries have thriving black markets, either due to their willful failure to police the practice or more good faith lack of resources to detect it. I focus on the sale of kidneys, the most common subject of transplant tourism, though much of what I say could be applied to other organs as well. Part I briefly reviews some ...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: I. Glenn Cohen Source Type: research

What's Missing? Discussing Stem Cell Translational Research in Educational Information on Stem Cell “Tourism”
Stem cell tourism is a growing industry in which patients pursue unproven stem cell therapies for a wide variety of illnesses and conditions. It is a challenging market to regulate due to a number of factors including its international, online, direct‐to‐consumer approach. Calls to provide education and information to patients, their families, physicians, and the general public about the risks associated with stem cell tourism are mounting. Initial studies examining the perceptions of patients who have pursued stem cell tourism indicate many are highly critical of the research and regulatory systems in their home count...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Zubin Master, Amy Zarzeczny, Christen Rachul, Timothy Caulfield Source Type: research

Global Trade and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Regulatory Challenges in International Surrogacy
International surrogacy is an increasingly common phenomenon and an important global health challenge. Legal rules are a key consideration for the participants in international surrogacy arrangements. In some cases the law can help to resolve the complex issues that arise in this context, but it is important to consider the role played by law in contributing to the complex conflicts that such arrangements can generate. (Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics)
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Erin Nelson Source Type: research

Transnational Trade in Human Eggs: Law, Policy, and (In)Action in Canada
In this paper, we provide as accurate a picture as possible of transnational trade in human eggs involving Canadians. We explain the legal status in Canada, and call for reform in the regulation, of such trade. (Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics)
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Jocelyn Downie, Françoise Baylis Source Type: research

The High Price of “Free” Trade: U.S. Trade Agreements and Access to Medicines
The United States' pursuit of increasingly TRIPS‐Plus levels of intellectual property protection for medicines in bilateral and regional trade agreements is well recognized. Less so, however, are U.S. efforts through these agreements to influence and constrain the pharmaceutical coverage programs of its trading partners. Although arguably unsuccessful in the Australia‐ U.S. Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), the U.S. nevertheless succeeded in its bilateral FTA with South Korea (KORUS) in establishing prescriptive provisions pertaining to the operation of coverage and reimbursement programs for medicines and medical devices...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Ruth Lopert, Deborah Gleeson Source Type: research

Patents and Human Rights: A Heterodox Analysis
This article argues that this is the wrong question to ask. Following an analysis of both patent and human rights law, this article suggests that the better approach is to focus on national debates over the best calibration of patent law to achieve national objectives. (Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics)
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: E. Richard Gold Source Type: research

Pharmaceutical Knowledge Governance: A Human Rights Perspective
Industry control over the production and distribution of pharmaceutical safety and efficacy data has become a serious public health and health care funding concern. Various recent scandals, several involving the use of flawed representations of scientific data in the most influential medical journals, highlight the urgency of enhancing pharmaceutical knowledge governance. This paper analyzes why this is a human rights concern and what difference a human rights analysis can make. The paper first identifies the challenges associated with the current knowledge deficit. It then discusses, based on an analysis of case law, how ...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Trudo Lemmens Source Type: research

Tobacco Control Litigation: Broader Impacts on Health Rights Adjudication
This paper argues that there are instances in which tobacco control litigation is strengthening the justiciability of the right to health and health‐related rights. This is happening in different parts of the world, but in particular in Latin America. In part this is because, to a certain extent, tobacco control litigation based on fundamental rights overcomes the traditional arguments against economic, social and cultural rights adjudication: the anti‐democratic argument, the lack of technical competency argument, the problem of the misallocation of scarce public resources and the problem of the implementation of judi...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Oscar A. Cabrera, Juan Carballo Source Type: research

Is There a Human Right to Private Health Care?
In recent years we have noticed an increase in the turn to rights analysis in litigation relating to access to health care. Examining litigation, we can notice a contradiction between on the one hand the ability of the right to health to reinforce privatization and commodification of health care, by rearticulating claims to private health care in terms of human rights, and on the other hand, its ability to reinforce and reinstate public values, especially that of equality, against the background of privatization and commodification. While many hope that rights discourse will do the latter, and secure that access to health ...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Aeyal Gross Source Type: research

The Debatable Role of Courts in Brazil's Health Care System: Does Litigation Harm or Help?
Recent studies of the Brazilian case suggest that successful litigation can have regressive effects and negatively impact the health care system. While the data to support this claim is not conclusive, this paper assumes that such immediate regressive effects are indeed taking place, but asks if these are the only consequences that should be analyzed in assessing the impact of right to health litigation in Brazil. The answer is no. The current perspective adopted to assess right to health litigation in Brazil is too narrow. Other consequences can and should be considered in analyzing the overall impact of litigation. To go...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Mariana Mota Prado Source Type: research

Human Rights and Maternal Health: Exploring the Effectiveness of the Alyne Decision
This article explores the effectiveness of the decision of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in the case of Alyne da Silva Pimentel Teixeira (deceased) v. Brazil, concerning a poor, Afro‐Brazilian woman. This is the first decision of an international human rights treaty body to hold a state accountable for its failure to prevent an avoidable death in childbirth. Assessing the future effectiveness of this decision might be undertaken concretely by determining the degree of Brazil's actual compliance with the Committee's recommendations, and how this decision influences pending domestic litig...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Rebecca J. Cook Source Type: research

A Survey of International Legal Instruments to Examine Their Effectiveness in Improving Global Health and in Realizing Health Rights
Many global health issues, almost by definition, do not recognize state borders and therefore require bi‐lateral, or more often multi‐lateral international solutions. These latter solutions are articulated in international instruments (declarations, conventions, treaties, constitutions of international bodies, etc). However, the gap between formal adoption of such instruments by signatory states and substantive implementation of the articulated solutions can be very wide. This paper surveys a selection of international legal instruments, including those where the sought after positive outcomes have been achieved, and t...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Arthur Wilson, Abdallah S. Daar Source Type: research

The Role of Law in Ameliorating Global Inequalities in Indigenous Peoples' Health
This article explores aspects of law's potential for ameliorating the health deficit which Indigenous peoples experience around the globe, with a focus on international law and international legal forums. It considers the challenges and benefits of using these tools and forums to affect changes within domestic systems. (Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics)
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Constance MacIntosh Source Type: research

Protecting Rights and Building Capacities: Challenges to Global Mental Health Policy in Light of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified mental health as a priority for global health promotion and international development to be targeted through promulgation of evidence‐based medical practices, health systems reform, and respect for human rights. Yet these overlapping strategies are marked by tensions as the historical primacy of expert‐led initiatives is increasingly subject to challenge by new social movements — in particular, disabled persons' organizations (DPOs). These tensions come into focus upon situating the WHO's mental health policy initiatives in light of certain controversies arising unde...
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Sheila Wildeman Source Type: research

Global Health, Vulnerable Populations, and Law
Given the fragility of individual and population wellbeing in an interdependent world threatened by many overlapping crises, the suggestion is made that new legal mechanisms have the robust potential to reduce human vulnerability locally and globally. (Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics)
Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics - April 12, 2013 Category: Medical Law Authors: Solomon R. Benatar Source Type: research