Month: February 2013
Israeli High Court of Justice Allows Sperm Donor to Take Back His Sample
As Ha’aretz reports, (H/T Melanie Mader and Nir Eyal) the Israeli High Court of Justice has just decided a fascinating reproductive technology case. As the article reports:
Galit is a 39-year-old single mother who has a three-year-old daughter conceived through a sperm donation. After giving birth, Galit (who preferred that her real name not be revealed) purchased five more samples of sperm from the same donor and paid an annual fee to store them for her. When Galit, who lives in Florida, decided to try to become pregnant again she bought a plane ticket to Israel for that purpose. But one night, she got a surprising phone call. “I was told coldly that the donor had changed his mind. He had changed his lifestyle, become religiously observant and had written a letter to the Health Ministry confirming this. The caller ended by saying, ‘Of course we will return the payment for storing the sperm’ – a small, negligible amount.” At first, Galit continues, “I thought someone was playing a prank on me. I felt that my feelings were being totally ignored. This was about my future children. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to have more children from that donor, and therefore my daughter would not have biological siblings.”
Galit launched a legal battle, which ended two weeks ago with a High Court of Justice ruling rejecting her request to receive the sperm she had paid for. The court found that the donor’s right to change his mind after making the donation takes precedence over the recipient’s right to use the sperm in order to give birth to biological siblings for her daughter.
As it happens, these are the exact issues I wrote about in 2008 in a pair of articles, The Constitution and The Rights Not to Procreate, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 1135 (2008) and The Right Not to Be a Genetic Parent, 81 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1115 (2008). I have yet to get a hold of a translation of the new judgment into English, but from the reporting it seems as though the Court agreed in part and disagreed in part with the analysis I offer in these papers (particularly the latter one):
They agree with me that there is a “Right Not to Be a Genetic Parent” and my argument that it is best conceived of as a right to avoid a kind of emotional distress from what I call “attributional parenthood” — the attribution by oneself, third parties, and/or the resulting child of unwanted parenthood. Where we seem to part ways is that I view this as a right capable of waiver, and argue that it should clearly be waiveable by contract, which there appears to be in this case, while the Israeli High Court appears to treat it more as an inalienable right.
I may have more to say once I’ve read the whole opinion in English, but for now one sociological fact: As Ellen Waldman among others has noted, and born out by my own time teaching there, Israel is an incredibly pro-natalist society that strongly funds and favors the use of reproductive technology and family formation in general. This case is thus interestingly at variance with others the Israeli judiciary has decided in the reproductive technology context, such as the Nachmani v. Nachmani case (involving a dispute over frozen pre-embryos) where the court has been more disposed to favoring the right to be a genetic parent and allowing reproduction despite disputes.
The article reports that Galit will seek rehearing in front of a larger panel of the High Court soon, so perhaps this is not the end of the litigation.
Twitter Round-Up (2/16-2/23)
By Casey Thomson
This week’s round-up discusses the upcoming cases relevant to bioethics in the Supreme Court, the benefits of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, the surprisingly low effectiveness rate of this year’s flu vaccine, and the problems with ACA’s Accountable Care Organizations. See below for details and more summaries:
- Frank Pasquale (@FrankPasquale) shared a post on what’s being called the “alcoholism vaccine” being developed at the Institute for Cell Dynamics and Biotechnology at Universidad de Chile. The vaccine, which would have to be administered every 6 months or year, would mimic the alcohol intolerance mutation that prevents the breaking down of acetaldehyde and produces an instant “hangover-type” state. (2/16)
- Dan Vorhaus (@genomicslawyer) retweeted a timeline from the Center for Law and Bioscience at Stanford Law’s blog giving dates for the upcoming Supreme Court cases relating to biosciences. (2/17)
- Frank Pasquale (@FrankPasquale) additionally included a piece on the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, a provision of the Affordable Care Act that would “[require] manufacturers of drugs, medical devices and biologics to report the monetary value of gifts and payments to doctors and teaching hospitals on a publicly accessible website.” The author of the piece, a family physician with 15 years of experience, discussed his support for the plan. (2/17)
- Michelle Meyer (@MichelleNMeyer) retweeted a link explaining the scientific foundations of the Brain Activity Map Project, namely how it aims at “reconstructing the full record of neural activity across complete neural circuits” to better understand “fundamental and pathological brain processes.” (2/18)
- Arthur Caplan (@ArthurCaplan) posted a news story on police arresting those involved in the illegal harvesting of eggs from women in Bucharest, Romania. The police reports claim that 11 suspects have been implicated in the trafficking, which would harvest the eggs to be sold to Israeli couples with fertility problems. (2/19)
- Alex Smith (@AlexSmithMD) retweeted a link to his post on asking about a patient’s PPD (preferred place of death), noting that this is not one of the concerns often cited as part of advanced planning procedures. Such a practice was considered “vital” in the UK, in contrast. (2/20)
- Alex Smith (@AlexSmithMD) shared a link to a post on the blog he co-runs, GeriPal, on “Five Things Patients and Physicians Should Question in Palliative Care and Geriatrics.” The post shares the two lists posted by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) and the American Geriatrics Society (AGS), which Smith claims “provide targeted, evidence-based recommendations to help physicians and patients have conversations about making wise choices about their care in order to avoid interventions that provide little to no benefit.” (2/21)
- Arthur Caplan (@ArthurCaplan) also included a link reviewing the low effectiveness of this year’s flu vaccine: there was evidence that it was only effective in 56% of the cases, on the low end of the usual 50-70% effectiveness rate. His tweet noted that this was strong evidence in favor of mandating the vaccine for healthcare workers. (2/21)
- Michelle Meyer (@MichelleNMeyer) posted an op-ed piece by The Wall Street Journal about the problems with Affordable Care Act’s Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), namely their false assumptions: that success can come without changing doctor behavior, and without changing patient behavior, in a way that will save money. (2/23)
Job Opening: Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center
Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center invites applications from experienced health law teachers and scholars for the Kermit Gitenstein Distinguished Visiting Chair in Health Law and Policy. Touro is seeking a nationally-known professor in the field of health law and policy to fill the chair for the spring semester in 2014. The Gitenstein visiting professor will teach at least one course at the law school, deliver public lectures, and participate fully in faculty and student life. Touro Law Center is part of Touro College, which includes New York Medical College—one of the largest private health sciences universities in the nation. The visiting chair will have the opportunity to develop collaborative initiatives with the medical profession in general and New York Medical College in particular. Women, members of minority groups and others whose background will contribute to the diversity of the faculty are encouraged to apply.
Touro Law Center is a dynamic institution that is at the forefront of legal education in this country, dedicated to producing practice-ready graduates. Touro’s students have the unique opportunity to take advantage of the first-ever law campus in the United States—a law school adjacent to and working with both a federal courthouse and a state courthouse. The law school is located in Suffolk County, Long Island, approximately an hour outside of New York City.
Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume at the earliest possible date for full consideration. Contact: Fabio Arcila, Jr., Appointments Committee Chair and Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship, at farcila@tourolaw.edu.
Touro College is committed to the principles of equal employment opportunity. Our practices and employment decisions regarding employment, hiring, assignment, promotion, compensation, and other terms and conditions of employment are not to be based on an employee’s race, color, sex, age, religion, national origin, disability, ancestry, military discharge status, sexual orientation, marital status, genetic predisposition, housing status, or any other protected status, in accordance with applicable law. Our policies are in conformance with Title IX, 1972 Education Amendments.
Yale Friday Newsletter – 02/22/13
Here’s this week’s Yale newsletter. Enjoy!
Final Tally on Insurance Marketplaces
The Commonwealth Fund, here, has a very useful update on state choices for their marketplace types. The importance of these exchanges is noted by the authors: “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by the end of next year some 9 million people will have enrolled in plans offered through their state marketplace, rising to 25 million by 2022. The majority of the enrollees will also receive premium subsidies.”
The final tally?
- State-run: 17 plus DC
- State-federal partnership: 7
- Federally-facilitated: 26
Professional Athletes and Personal Responsibility for Health
[Disclaimer: I am not involved in this, and the views expressed here are entirely my own.]
Concussions and Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) have been the dominant subject of concern in the sports world recently, and for good reason, but I would like to highlight an often overlooked and more general problem. Our athletes are rewarded for pushing their bodies to the brink to accomplish majestic feats, requiring physical perfection. We laud playing through injuries to succeed at the pinnacle of sport, or recovering from injuries at super human speeds, only to return those bodies to the brutal punishment of competition.[1] With these pressures, Concussions and PEDs can be viewed as mere symptoms of a culture that runs from the fans to the teams to the players themselves, asking them to sacrifice their bodies, sometimes, to the detriment of their long-term health. In this new age of awareness about player health, we should be asking: Are athletes making properly informed rational choices about their health? Or are there situations where neither the players nor their teams are properly incentivized to protect long-term player health due to the culture described above?
Some recent stories have exemplified the culture:
Job Opening — Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine Seeking Bioethicist
HJF is seeking a Bioethicist to provide support under an NIH-funded contract to the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of NIH, located on Rockledge Drive in Bethesda, Maryland. Under the NIH Contract, HJF’s separate operating division, HJF-DAIDS, provides scientific and operations support to DAIDS including the Basic Sciences Program (BSP). Responsibilities include researching and preparing background materials on bioethical issues relevant to NIH/NIAID research for use by NIAID staff; reviewing clinical trial protocols upon request; working with NIAID staff to identify, coordinate, and resolve issues concerning ethical principles and the application of United States and international regulations and ethical guidelines in international settings; providing expert input in planning and organizing stakeholder meetings on bioethics topics. Excellent research, oral communication and writing skills needed, and experience and advanced training in bioethics required.
For more information and to apply, please see www.hjf.org and click on Careers.
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