Biblical Biopolitics: Judicial Process, Religious Rhetoric, Terri Schiavo and Beyond

While a recent flurry of academic and popular attention has been focused on the saga of Terri Schiavo, this Article begins by presenting the legal doctrine and established bioethical consensus regarding autonomy and guardianship law in the context of end-of-life/PVS disputes. Next, this Article provides a comprehensive examination of the judicial proceedings in Mrs. Schiavo’s case, as well as an analysis of the Religious Right activism that brought this case international attention and unprecedented involvement by all three branches of government at both the federal and state level. In response to widespread confusion, even among the legal community, and outright hostility by some towards the judiciary, this Article concludes that the law did not fail Terri Schiavo, and on the contrary, the judicial process in this instance worked remarkably well. This Article, however, moves beyond the immediacy of the Schiavo case to examine the larger culture war context, including empirical analysis of the irresponsible and inappropriate use of abortion-politics rhetoric and misguided post-Schiavo legislative agenda that forms what this Article labels Biblical BioPolitics. Normatively, this Article ultimately concludes that the actions of certain politicized religious organizations portend destructive, long-term implications for both civil public discourse in our pluralistic society and in the area of end-of-life/PVS public policy. A clear understanding of the current legal regime vis-à-vis end-of-life/PVS situations and an analysis of the Biblical BioPolitics that threaten this regime is, therefore, particularly crucial for members of the legal and health care professions and all of us who may one day find ourselves patients

For Patients and Profits: Ethical Astuteness and the Business of Dialysis

The view of ethical astuteness introduced and outlined in this paper aims to add value for a firm in the healthcare business – with a particular application to a for-profit organization providing dialysis services – by addressing two chief concerns: A.) The competing priorities between the patient’s interest in the healthcare encounter and the investor’s interest in generating a return on profits; and B.) The vulnerabilities of a financially-conflicted, for-profit healthcare provider to an allegation of medical malpractice

A Missed Opportunity: Health Care Reform, Rhetoric, Ethics and Economics at the End of Life

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The People\u27s NIH? Ethical and Legal Concerns in Crowdfunded Biomedical Research

Over the last decade, online crowdfunding has become a mainstream source of capital formation for a range of artistic and entrepreneurial endeavors. Low-barrier websites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo that fund production of a movie or recording of an album, in addition to charity conduits such as Kiva that facilitate the dissemination of microloans in the developing world, are trusted fundraising mechanisms that offer alternatives to traditional financing through banks and venture capitalists. Moreover, these models predicated on the solicitation of relatively modest amounts of money create a more egalitarian investment environment wherein donors can join the effort—and often receive some token reward— in exchange for a sense of personal engagement and affiliation with the underlying project being financed. Crowdvesting is a kind of crowdfunding designed to raise capital a la traditional stock offerings and the sale of ` securities. Unlike charitable donations, such investment opportunities trigger analysis under existing securities laws and regulations, some of which date to post-Great Depression concerns, i.e., the 1933 and 1934 Securities Acts and others flowing from the more recent Great Recession milieu, i.e, the JOBS Act of 2012 and related state analogues. Given the decreasing availability of federal research funding, biomedical researchers have begun to explore the potential for crowdfunding models of financing. This paper explores the ethical and legal issues triggered by the specific case of the physician-researcher, active both in the clinic and at the bench, who seeks to raise funding via crowdfunding channels. Should physician-researchers solicit research funding from their patients? What are the implications for the patient’s sense of trust and the patient’s relationship with the physician? And what about those donating who are not patients or related stakeholders, but rather interested and sympathetic donors who wish to help the cause? This paper maps the landscape of these questions and concerns, and lays the groundwork for future empirical and theoretical explorations, as well as policy and practice guidelines

Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Hearings and the Question of Criminality

President Joe Biden legitimately won a fair and secure 2020 presidential election--and Donald Trump lost. This historical fact has been uncontroverted by any evidence since at least November 7, 2020, when major news outlets projected Biden's victory. But Trump never conceded. Instead, both before and after Election Day, he tried to delegitimize the election results by disseminating a series of far-fetched and evidence-free claims of fraud. Meanwhile, with a ring of close confidants, Trump conceived and implemented unprecedented schemes to--in his own words--"overturn" the election outcome. Among the results of this "Big Lie" campaign were the terrible events of January 6, 2021--an inflection point in what we now understand was nothing less than an attempted coup.With Congress undertaking landmark hearings on all of that, this report is a comprehensive guide to the proceedings. It covers the Committee's work to date, the key players in the attempt to overturn the election, the known facts regarding their conduct that are expected to be covered at the hearings, and the criminal law applicable to their actions. The report is intended to help readers evaluate all those proceedings going forward

Biopolitics at the Bedside: Proxy Wars and Feeding Tubes

In the aftermath of Terri Schiavo’s dramatic final weeks of life, George Annas speculated that proponents of “culture of life” politics might “now view [themselves] as strong enough to generate new laws . . . to require that incompetent patients be kept alive with artificially delivered fluids and nutrition.” Indeed, Professor Annas’ prescience has been demonstrated by the post-Schiavo introduction in two dozen state legislatures of over fifty different bills making it more onerous to remove a patient’s artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH). With minor exception, however, most of the proposed legislation has either stalled or been watered down, prompting columnist Ellen Goodman to ponder: “What if they gave a culture war and nobody came?” With public opinion polls reporting large majorities in favor of Mrs. Schiavo’s right to cease ANH and in opposition to the government’s intervention in Mrs. Schiavo’s case, the failure of this legislative agenda is not surprising. But Ms. Goodman’s query underestimates the power of what Alta Charo labels “proxy wars” waged by well-funded, opportunistic abortion opponents who seized on the Schiavo case as an opportunity “to rehearse arguments on the value of biologic but nonsentient human existence.” Appropriating Professor Charo’s notion of “proxy wars” and various critical theorists’ concept of biopolitics—that political power which Foucault labeled “the power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die”—this paper explores the post-Schiavo political-legal environment and the surge in ANH-related legislation as evidence of what Nancy Neveloff Dubler has termed “a new era of politicized and polarized death.