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Ethical Challenges of Preexposure Prophylaxis for HIV
Get PDFOn July 16, 2012, emtricitabine/tenofovir (Truvada) became the first drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for adults at high risk. While PrEP appears highly effective with consistent adherence, effective implementation poses ethical challenges for the medical and public health community. For PrEP users, it is necessary to maintain adherence, safe sex practices, and routine HIV testing and medical monitoring, to maximize benefits and reduce risks. On a population level, comparative cost-effectiveness should guide priority-setting, while safety measures must address drug resistance concerns without burdening patients\u27 access. Equitable distribution will require addressing the needs of underserved populations, women (for whom efficacy data are mixed) and people living in developing countries with high HIV incidence; meanwhile, it is necessary to consider the fair use of drugs for treatment vs. prevention and the appropriate design of new HIV prevention studies
The Coming Water Crisis: A Common Concern of Mankind
Get PDFThis essay argues that fresh water, its availability and use, should now be recognized as ‘a common concern of humankind’, much as climate change was recognized as a ‘common concern of humankind’ in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and conservation of biodiversity was recognized as a ‘common concern of humankind’ in the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. This would respond to the many linkages between what happens in one area with the demand for and the supply of fresh water in other areas. It would take into account the scientific characteristics of the hydrological cycle, address the growing commodification of water in the form of transboundary water markets and virtual water transfers through food production and trade, and respect the efforts to identify a human right to water
And They Call It Puppy Love: Young Love, Forced Marriage and Immigration Rules
No full textIN R. (Quila and another) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] UKSC 45, [2011] 3 W.L.R. 836, the Supreme Court faced an immigration rule that pitted the prevention of forced marriages against young couples in genuine marriages who wished to live in the country together. A forced marriage can be defined as a marriage into which one party is coerced to enter without full and free consent, including through threats or other psychological means. In 2008, as part of the Government\u27s efforts to prevent forced marriages, the Home Secretary amended para. 277 of the Immigration Rules so as to raise the age for a UK national to sponsor a foreign spouse or civil partner seeking admission to the country and for the incoming applicant from 18 to 21. The Home Secretary was clear that that the amendment to the Immigration Rules was to deter forced marriages, not to control immigration, as most such marriages occur between the ages of 18 and 20
Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2011
Get PDFFor the third consecutive year, the website home pages for all ABA-accredited law schools are evaluated and ranked based on objective criteria. For 2011, law school home pages advanced in some areas. For instance, there are now thirteen sites using the HTML5 doctype, up from a single site in 2010. In addition, seventeen schools achieved a perfect score for three tests focused on website accessibility, up from eight in 2010. Nonetheless, there’s enough diversity in coding practices and content to help separate the great from the good.
For this year’s survey, twenty-four elements of each home page are assessed across three broad categories: Design Patterns & Metadata; Accessibility & Validation; and Marketing & Communications. Most elements require no special design skills, sophisticated technology or significant expenses. For interpreting these results, the author does not try to decide if any whole is greater or less than the sum of its parts
The Nature of Risk Preferences: Evidence from Insurance Choices
Get PDFThe authors use data on insurance deductible choices to estimate a structural model of risky choice that incorporates standard risk aversion (diminishing marginal utility for wealth) and probability distortions. They find that probability distortions--characterized by substantial overweighting of small probabilities and only mild insensitivity to probability changes--play an important role in explaining the aversion to risk manifested in deductible choices. This finding is robust to allowing for observed and unobserved heterogeneity in preferences. They demonstrate that neither Kőszegi-Rabin loss aversion alone nor Gul disappointment aversion alone can explain our estimated probability distortions, signifying a key role for probability weighting
The Master Mason: How Professor Baldus Built a Bridge from Learning to Law and the Legacy of Equal Justice He Leaves Behind
Get PDFThese are Chief Judge Baker’s remarks eulogizing the late Professor David Baldus. Chief Judge Baker observes that Professor Baldus was an extraordinary educator-lawyer who mastered the fields of social science and statistics. He adds that Professor Baldus was diligent in his research and strived to make the law accessible. Chief Judge Baker discusses how Professor Baldus’s research on the death penalty and proportionality review successfully bridged the law and learning, without ever losing sight of compassion
A Risky Business: Generation of Nuclear Power and Deepwater Drilling for Offshore Oil and Gas
Get PDFGovernment regulation and licensing of industrial activities that create the possibility of catastrophic risk reflect “a political value judgment that these activities provide a social benefit that is greater than the social cost of the risks that they cause.” However, when a catastrophic accident occurs, the cost-benefit evaluations underlying the value judgment that authorized the activity may need to be rethought. Social rethinking is especially warranted when the accident could have been prevented had either the industry or the government more seriously assessed the risk of a catastrophic event and implemented precautionary steps to avoid it. This was the conclusion reached by the President\u27s Oil Spill Commission with respect to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident in April 2010, which killed eleven platform workers, injured seventeen more, discharged nearly five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, devastated the area\u27s economy and *65 environment, and to date has cost hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up. Because the Deepwater Horizon debacle was not the first serious accident at an offshore drilling rig in recent memory, these failures in oversight are surprising. For reasons this Article will explore, the companies that engage in offshore drilling for oil and gas, and the agencies that regulate them, assess the risk of an operational accident as very low, despite the fact that serious well blowouts are not infrequent events. That assessment affects both the stringency of regulatory oversight and the precautionary steps a company takes to guard against the occurrence of accidents
Against the New Maternalism
Get PDFThe biggest challenge for sex equality in the 21st Century is to dismantle inequality between women and men’s family care responsibilities. American law has largely accomplished formal equality in parenting by doing away with explicit gender classifications, along with many of the assumptions that fostered them. In a dramatic change from the mid-20th Century, law relating to family, work, civic participation and their various intersections is now virtually all sex-neutral. As the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Nevada Department of Social Services v. Hibbs demonstrates, both Congress and the Court have accepted the feminist critique of sex roles and stereotyping as engines of discrimination and inequality. But the resultant legal reforms address only formal inequality; the challenge of lived inequality remains. Changes in legal norms must be embraced throughout the culture before their promise will be made real. The most influential and resistant obstacle to actualizing gender equality is the continuing cultural practice of romanticizing the mother as the best possible caretaker. As the Court has recognized, we cannot simply accept existing gendered family patterns as results of freely made individual choices. Persistently gendered family care becomes self-fulfilling, and solidifies the very inequalities—economic, political and social—that the law strives to dislodge. Given that mothers’ unequal burden in the home is a fulcrum of broader sex discrimination, it is particularly disturbing that one of the most persistent strains in contemporary culture is a celebration of mothers’ domesticity and their role as the default parent, and that women’s rights organizations are buying in. The “new maternalism,” as we call it, is evident along the political spectrum and across popular culture, from Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzlies to the internet advocacy group Moms Rising, and from movies, television and advertising to countless “mommy blogs.” This phenomenon amounts to a distinctive, post-feminist understanding of motherhood that studiously avoids engaging with the gendered division of parenting and refuses to make any demands on men. By appealing to mothers, and not fathers, new maternalism risks reinforcing mothers’ second shift and the countless inequalities that flow from it. The sophisticated policy advocates who participate in the promotion of new maternalism have made a strategic choice to tap a culturally potent, contemporary form of gender identity politics. But they jeopardize their own advocacy goals when parenting and care work are cast in exclusively female terms, as a new—but fundamentally retro and feminine—maternalism. Our analysis of the culture of new maternalism and its legal consequences comes from a deep appreciation of the enormous value and satisfactions of parenting; new maternalism has such appeal precisely because it correctly embraces what is meaningful about family care. Its error, we contend, lies in the tacit exclusion of men, whether willing or reluctant, from engaged parenting’s benefits and responsibilities. We conclude that equality outside the home requires equality inside it, which is why we come out against the new maternalism
A Journey from the Heart of Apartheid Darkness Towards a Just Society: Salient Features of the Budding Constitutionalism and Jurisprudence of South Africa
Get PDFOn April 4, 2012, Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke of the Republic of South Africa delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s thirty-second annual Philip A. Hart Lecture: “A Journey from the Heart of Apartheid Darkness towards a Just Society: Salient Features of the Budding Constitutionalism and Jurisprudence of South Africa.”
Moseneke earned a BA in English and political science, as well as a B Juris degree from University of South Africa and later completed an LLB. Justice Moseneke began his professional career in 1976 as an attorney’s clerk in Pretoria. In 1978 he was admitted and practiced for five years as an attorney and partner at the law firm Maluleke, Seriti and Moseneke. He was called to the Bar in 1983 and practiced as an advocate in Johannesburg and Pretoria. In 1993, he was elevated to the status of senior counsel.
Justice Moseneke served on the technical committee that drafted the interim constitution of 1993. In 1994, he was appointed Deputy Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission, which conducted the first democratic elections in South Africa. In September 1994, he accepted an acting appointment to the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court. Before his appointment as Justice of the Constitutional Court, Justice Moseneke was a Judge of the High Court in Pretoria. In June 2005, Justice Moseneke was appointed Deputy Chief Justice of the Republic of South Africa.
Justice Moseneke is a founding member of the Black Lawyers’ Association and of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers of South Africa. He has served in several community and non-governmental organizations, holds several honorary doctorates and has received numerous awards of honor, performance and excellence
Global Health Justice: A Perspective from the Global South on a Framework Convention on Global Health
Get PDFA global coalition of civil society and academics recently launched the Joint Action and Learning Initiative on National and Global Responsibilities for Health (JALI), which is developing a post-Millennium Development Goal (MDG) framework for global health. JALI’s mission is the achievement of a global health treaty based on the right to health—a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH). The FCGH proposes establishing fair terms of international co-operation, with agreed-upon mutually binding obligations to create enduring health system capacities, meet basic survival needs, and reduce unconscionable inequalities in global health. States that bear a disproportionate burden of disease have the least capacity to do anything about it. The richer states are deeply resistant to expending the political capital and economic resources. When they do act, it is often more out of narrow self-interest or humanitarian instinct than a full sense of ethical or legal obligation. The result is a spiraling deterioration of health in the poorest regions, with manifest global consequences and systemic effects on trade, international relations, and security.
The very concept of global health justice as conceived by JALI and the FCGH is to have the global campaign led by civil society, with the major conceptualization and advocacy coming from the Global South. This paper presents the African, particularly South African, perspective on global health justice