Neuro Lie Detection and Mental Privacy

New technologies inevitably raise novel legal questions. This is particularly true of technologies, such as neuro lie detection, that offer new ways to investigate crime. Recently, a number of scholars have asked whether neuro lie detection testing is constitutional. So far, the debate has focused on the Fifth Amendment—specifically whether evidence gathered through neuro lie detection is constitutionally admissible because it is “physical” in nature or inadmissible because it is “testimonial” in nature. Under current Supreme Court doctrine, this Fifth Amendment debate is intractable. However, the more fundamental question of whether the government can compel individuals to undergo a neuro lie detection test does have a clear answer. It just so happens that the answer lies in the Fourth Amendment, not the Fifth. In this Paper, we argue that forcing a criminal defendant, or any other person, to submit to a neuro lie detection test is a substantial invasion of mental privacy that is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment

Ethical Issues In Genetic Testing

Genetic testing raises a host of ethical dilemmas—for the patient diagnosed with a genetic disorder, for her medical team, and even for the insurance company that provides her with coverage. This dissertation explores three ethical issues that arise in genetic testing. In the first Chapter, I explore whether patients who test positive for a genetic mutation are morally obligated to inform their at-risk relatives. I advance the discussion by developing a new account of patients’ duty to warn. Specifically, I argue that patients’ have a duty to warn that is grounded in the principle of rescue—the idea that one ought to prevent, reduce, or mitigate the risk of harm to another person when the expected harm is serious and the cost or risk to oneself is sufficiently moderate. In the second Chapter, I explore which considerations ought to bear on whether it is permissible for a provider to breach confidentiality in order to warn patients’ genetically vulnerable relatives. In the last Chapter, I argue that insurance providers should be required to cover in vitro fertilization with preimplantation genetic diagnosis for prospective parents who are at risk of passing a serious genetic disorder to their children. I present three arguments in support of mandated coverage

Severity of Prenatal Cocaine Exposure and Child Language Functioning Through Age Seven Years: A Longitudinal Latent Growth Curve Analysis

The current study estimates the longitudinal effects of severity of prenatal cocaine exposure on language functioning in an urban sample of full-term African-American children (200 cocaine-exposed, 176 noncocaine-exposed) through age 7 years. The Miami Prenatal Cocaine Study sample was enrolled prospectively at birth, with documentation of prenatal drug exposure status through maternal interview and toxicology assays of maternal and infant urine and infant meconium. Language functioning was measured at ages 3 and 5 years using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Preschool (CELF-P) and at age 7 years using the Core Language Domain of the NEPSY: A Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment. Longitudinal latent growth curve analyses were used to examine two components of language functioning, a more stable aptitude for language performance and a time-varying trajectory of language development, across the three time points and their relationship to varying levels of prenatal cocaine exposure. Severity of prenatal cocaine exposure was characterized using a latent construct combining maternal self-report of cocaine use during pregnancy by trimesters and maternal and infant bioassays, allowing all available information to be taken into account. The association between severity of exposure and language functioning was examined within a model including factors for fetal growth, gestational age, and IQ as intercorrelated response variables and child’s age, gender, and prenatal alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana exposure as covariates. Results indicated that greater severity of prenatal cocaine exposure was associated with greater deficits within the more stable aptitude for language performance (D = −0.071, 95% CI = −0.133, −0.009; p = 0.026). There was no relationship between severity of prenatal cocaine exposure and the time-varying trajectory of language development. The observed cocaine-associated deficit was independent of multiple alternative suspected sources of variation in language performance, including other potential responses to prenatal cocaine exposure, such as child’s intellectual functioning, and other birth and postnatal influences, including language stimulation in the home environment