Effects of the Shape of the Radiation Dose-Response Curve on Public Acceptance of Radiation and Nuclear Energy

[Excerpt] “The public generally accepts the premise that exposure to radiation can have an undesirable effect. Furthermore, it believes that as the radiation dose increases, the magnitude of the effect will increase. On the other hand, while the background radiation dose varies from a few hundred millirem/year (a few millisieverts/yr) in some places to a few thousand millirem/yr (tens of millisieverts/yr) in others, researchers have been unable to find a correlation between the level of background radiation and incidence of cancer or other maladies attributable to radiation. … Because there is considerable controversy about the relationship between radiation dose and its effects, i.e., the shape of the curve, and because use of the LNT model does lead to standards that can be expensive to meet, national and international organizations periodically review the evidence related to the shape of the curve and issue recommendations on the shape that regulatory agencies should use. The National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP) released its latest review in June 2001. In its report, the NCRP concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to justify changing from the LNT model to another. The target release date for a report by the National Academy of Sciences on the biological effects of ionizing radiation (BEIR-VII) is October 2003. The papers in this issue of Pierce Law Review explore the potential impact of the shape of the dose-response curve, if any, on society. This paper focuses on the impact dose response curves have on public acceptance, including nuclear energy. Use of nuclear technology, as is true of almost all technologies, offers benefits to society and presents some problems. Whether society chooses to take advantage of the benefits and deal with the problems or chooses to ban the technology often depends, in large measure, on public acceptance of that technology

The New Fetal Protection : The Wrong Answer to the Crisis of Inadequate Health Care for Women and Children

This article will expand upon the feminist critique by focusing on children\u27s health as well as the health and liberty interests of their mothers. In the first part of this article, I examine the legal and cultural underpinnings of “fetal protection” and explore its current manifestations. In the second part, I place “fetal protection” in a broader context, documenting the ways in which American law currently promotes fetal life, while simultaneously neglecting the lives and health of born children. The third part of the article offers concrete recommendations about how government, both state and federal, can actually achieve the goal of bringing healthy children into the world and enabling them to live healthy lives, paying particular attention to the problems of children who are born into domestic violence and/or poverty and are therefore at high risk for poor educational and health care outcomes. If we are to truly become a society in which “no child [is] left behind,” we must implement a comprehensive public health strategy to promote women\u27s and children\u27s health across the lifespan, not just during the few months in which women are pregnant

Marketing Mothers\u27 Milk: The Commodification of Breastfeeding and the New Markets for Breast Milk and Infant Formula

Today, breastfeeding, human breast milk, and its substitute, infant formula, are commodities. Mothers\u27 milk is marketed both literally and figuratively, as a good for sale, a normative behavior, and a cure for much of what ails twenty-first century America. Like previous exploitations of women\u27s bodies, including their eggs and uteruses, the idea that human milk is a valuable good that can be given away, traded in a market, or subjected to scientific experimentation raises fundamental moral and legal questions. This Article examines the marketing of breastfeeding, the emerging markets in human milk, and the growing market in infant formula through the lenses of bioethics, market analysis, and the commodification critique. This Article also examines the unique role of the medical profession in shaping the markets in human milk and infant formula

Privacy and Personhood Revisited: A New Framework for Substitute Decisionmaking for the Incompetent, Incurably Ill Adult

This Article is thus an exploration of the essentials of the human personhood in community, both the intimate community of family and close friends and the larger, more impersonal community of hospitals and health care providers, courts, legislatures, and lawyers. After undertaking an analysis of the sources of the autonomy model for decisionmaking in this area and the negative consequences of an exclusive reliance on that model, this Article will propose a new moral, legal, and medical framework for making medical treatment decisions for incompetent incurably ill adults. This model both provides maximum opportunities for each individual to determine for himself, without state interference, whether, and under what circumstances, he should receive life-sustaining medical treatment. Simultaneously, it recognizes that because all individuals are persons in community, decisionmaking in this area must promote and respect the connectedness of the human family by providing incentives and opportunity for conversation and compassion

Health Care Access for Children with Disabilities

In the last twenty-five years, we have seen a remarkable evolution in attitudes and practice toward the treatment of children with disabilities. Children born with severe physical and mental anomalies are no longer routinely allowed to die. Many such children, along with those who become disabled later in childhood through illness or injury, receive aggressive life-saving medical treatment as well as continuing medical and habilitative care. Some children, particularly those whose families are affluent, receive substantial therapeutic and other supportive services that permit them to overcome their disabilities and function effectively in school and, later, at work

Whose Right Is It Anyway?: Rethinking Competency to Stand Trial in Light of the Synthetically Sane Insanity Defendant

This article\u27s thesis is that given the magnitude of the insanity defendant\u27s fundamental constitutional liberties--his constitutional right to present and conduct his defense, his privilege against self-incrimination, his constitutional right to privacy and bodily integrity, and his common law right to give informed consent to medical treatment--the state\u27s interest in assuring the defendant\u27s competency must give way if he chooses to waive his right to be tried while competent. Most, if not all, of the purposes of the prohibition against trying an incompetent defendant can be met even if the defendant is tried without psychotropic medication as long as he is competent to consult with his counsel at some point before trial. After such consultation, the court must permit the insanity defendant to waive his right not to be tried while incompetent, so long as adequate procedural safeguards are provided

Internet Pharmacies: Why State Regulatory Solutions Are Not Enough

Internet pharmacies are an economic and communications miracle--and a regulatory nightmare. It is estimated that Americans spent some $3.2 billion in 2003 on medications from the Internet, but Internet pharmacies permit consumers to evade long-standing regulatory protections, particularly those that rely on the oversight of drug prescribing and dispensing by licensed physicians and pharmacists

Internet Pharmacies and the Need for a New Federalism: Protecting Consumers While Increasing Access to Prescription Drugs

In this article I will argue that Internet pharmacies pose a significant public health problem, as they raise the classic eternal triangle of health care issues--access, quality, and financing--in a new technological context. Part II describes the phenomena of Internet pharmacies, and Part III reviews the present regulatory scheme. Part IV explains why the current legal framework is inadequate to address the public health and safety problems posed by Internet pharmacies, focusing particularly on the jurisdictional, constitutional, and practical obstacles to effective state oversight of Internet pharmacies. Part V argues that comprehensive federal oversight of Internet prescribing and dispensing is necessary to protect individual and public health, and outlines the essential elements of such an approach

AIDS as a Chronic Illness: A Cautionary Tale for the End of the Twentieth Century

The result of the monumental shifts in the structure and financing of health care delivery is that at the very time that medical innovations have made possible significant improvements in the quality and quantity of life for people with chronic illnesses, those who are responsible for paying for Americans\u27 health care, in government and the private sector, seem to have finally said “Enough! We must cut costs, and cut them dramatically, and the simplest, most direct way of cutting costs is to deny coverage for certain kinds of treatments and certain kinds of illnesses.” People with HIV and AIDS are among those who are struggling, often unsuccessfully, for access to medically necessary treatment, but they are no longer alone. Millions of other Americans living with chronic disease face similar problems as they seek medical treatment that is effective, multi-faceted, and expensive in a health care system increasingly bent on controlling both the costs the structures of health care delivery. We thus stand at the threshold of a critical question: What lessons does the AIDS pandemic provide for American health care in general