Georgetown University Law Center

About: Georgetown University Law Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Public health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

The Harmful Side Effects of Drug Prohibition

Abstract: Some drugs make people feel good. That is why some people use them. Some of these drugs are alleged to have side effects so destructive that many advise against their use. The same may be said about statutes that attempt to prohibit the manufacture, sale, and use of drugs. Advocating drug prohibition makes some people feel good because they think they are “doing something” about what they believe to be a serious social problem. Others who support these laws are not so altruistically motivated. Employees of law enforcement bureaus and academics who receive government grants to study drug use, for example, may gain financially from drug prohibition. But as with using drugs, using drug laws can have moral and practical side effects so destructive that they argue against ever using legal institutions in this manner. This article will not attempt to identify and “weigh” the costs of drug use against the costs of drug laws. Instead, it will focus exclusively on identifying the harmful side effects of drug law enforcement and showing why these effects are unavoidable. So one-sided a treatment is justified for two reasons. First, a cost-benefit or cost-cost analysis may simply be impossible. Second, discussions by persons who support illegalizing drugs usually emphasize only the harmful effects of drug use while largely ignoring the serious costs of such policies. By exclusively relating the other side of the story, this article is intended to inject some balance into the normal debate. The harmful side-effects of drug laws have long been noted by a number of commentators, although among the general public the facts are not as well known as they should be. More importantly, even people who agree about the facts fail to grasp that it is the nature of the means — coercion — chosen to pursue the suppression of voluntary consumptive activity that makes these effects unavoidable. This vital and overlooked connection is the main subject of this article.

Global Health Law Governance

Abstract: The field of public health law traditionally focuses on law at the national and sub-national level. National legal systems, however, are inadequate to deal with major threats to humans. Despite the inadequacies of national governance, there are fundamental questions that need resolution in the field of global health law: Why should governments care about the health of people far away? Are profound health disparities just and, if not, is there a corresponding obligation to redress the injustice? Can international law effectively bind governments, foundations, and corporations to act for the global good? This article, based on a lecture at Emory Law School, asks the hard questions and offers some ways forward for the future of global health.

Ex vivo virtual and 3D printing methods for evaluating an anatomy-based spinal instrumentation technique for the 12th thoracic vertebra.

Abstract: INTRODUCTION Three-dimensional printing and virtual simulation both provide useful methods of patient-specific anatomical modeling for assessing and validating surgical techniques. A combination of these two methods for evaluating the feasibility of spinal instrumentation techniques based on anatomical landmarks has not previously been investigated. MATERIALS AND METHODS Nineteen anonymized CT scans of the thoracic spine in adult patients were acquired. Maximum pedicle width and height were recorded, and statistical analysis demonstrated normal distributions. The images were converted into standard tessellation language (STL) files, and the T12 vertebrae were anatomically segmented. The intersection of two diagonal lines drawn from the lateral and medial borders of the T12 transverse process (TP) to the lateral border of the pars and inferolateral portion of the TP was identified on both sides of each segmented vertebra. A virtual screw was created and insertion into the pedicle on each side was simulated using the proposed landmarks. The vertebral STL files were then 3D-printed, and 38 pedicles were instrumented according to the individual posterior landmarks used in the virtual investigation. RESULTS There were no pedicle breaches using the proposed anatomical landmarks for insertion of T12 pedicle screws in the virtual simulation component. The technique was further validated by additive manufacturing of individual T12 vertebrae and demonstrated no breaches or model failures during live instrumentation using the proposed landmarks. CONCLUSIONS Ex vivo modeling through virtual simulation and 3D printing provides a powerful and cost-effective means of replicating vital anatomical structures for investigation of complex surgical techniques.

Race and Discretion in American Medicine

Abstract: Providing health care is an endeavor replete with hidden opportunities for exercising discretion. Hard science answers few of the questions that physicians face daily, and the resulting space for discretion opens a myriad of possibilities for racial bias at the bedside, and in the administration and design of health plans. This article explores the connections between hidden discretion and racial disparities in health care provision. It highlights the influence of market and cost pressures, countervailing regulatory and liability concerns, and the changing organization and financing of medical services. It then offers proposals for institutional, legal, and cultural change that take pragmatic account of cost concerns (and the American health system's growing reliance on markets) while rejecting, as incident, the racial bias so evident in American medical practice. Finally, the article suggests some broader conclusions that we might draw about the psychology and social expression of bias, from the persistence of racial disparities in health care provision despite society's rejection of racism's overt forms.

The Anti-Trust Superbowl: America's Payment Systems, No-Surcharge Rules, and the Hidden Costs of Credit

Abstract: Whether a customer pays with cash, check, PIN- or signature-based debit card, or credit card, the transactions costs imposed on the merchant differ widely, but credit card networks' no-surcharge rules prevent the merchant from passing those different costs along to the customer. These no-surcharge rules are anti-competitive and cause an inefficient over-consumption of credit at the expense of other payment systems. Moreover, no-surcharge rules result in substantial negative social and economic welfare effects, including inflation, decreased consumer purchasing power because of greater debt service, lower savings rates, more consumer bankruptcies, inequitable subsidization of credit consumers by non-credit consumers, and unnecessary subsidization of the entire credit card industry outside of the political process. This article is the first piece in the legal literature to examine no-surcharge rules in the age of expanding electronic payment systems and rising consumer bankruptcies and to connect no-surcharge rules to social welfare issues. No-surcharge rules are coming under scrutiny in the US and abroad. The Federal Reserve Board has just embarked on its first-ever comprehensive review of Regulation Z, which implements the Truth-in-Lending Act and cash-credit pricing differentials. Recent anti-trust examination of credit card networks in the US and Europe may signal that the Board is willing to inspect closely many credit card practices. Australia's marked drop in demand for credit cards after banning surcharge restrictions in 2003 may also play into the Board's stated concern about the rapidly increasing growth of consumer debt in the US. Even if the Federal Reserve Board fails to act, the growth of the major credit cards networks' products at the expense of other payment systems networks may lead to private anti-trust actions directed at no-surcharge rules. The potential legal challenges would be the Superbowl of anti-trust litigation, dwarfing the record $3 billion anti-trust settlement Visa and MasterCard reached with Wal-Mart in 2003 over their restrictions on debit-card pricing. No-surcharge rules' role in payment system economics will undoubtedly gain increased attention over the next few years, as the abolition of no-surcharge rules would dramatically change Americans' payment and debt behavior.