Tag: Parental Rights

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Adoptee Rights and Adoption Annulment

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Gregory Luce

Annulling or legally ending an adoption is not a new concept, but it has rarely applied to the benefit of adopted people. Instead, informal practices, as well as specific legal frameworks dating back more than 100 years, have long-supported a “right of return” policy for adoptive parents who no longer feel an adoption is beneficial or even desired.

Activists within today’s adoptee rights movement, however, are working to establish a right to end a person’s own adoption by building on what has long existed in the law for adoptive parents, but refocusing it on the specific demands for autonomy of adopted people, particularly those who do not view adoption to be in their best interests.

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Terminally ill teen won historic court ruling to preserve her body after death

John Tingle Leave a comment

By John Tingle

The British media have been reporting and discussing widely the case of JS v M and F (Cryonic case), 10th November 2016 in the High Court of Justice, Family Division, [2016] EWHC 2859 (Fam). The case is the first in the UK and probably the world to deal with the issue of cryonics and a 14-year-old girls dying wish for her body to be preserved after her death with the hope that at some time in the future she will be brought back to life after a cure for her illness is found.

Truth is stranger than fiction and this case raises some fundamental legal and ethical issues which will occupy future courts and the legislature for some time to come. I could not imagine a more novel and difficult medical law case.

The facts

JS had a rare form of cancer and her active treatment came to an end in August when she started to receive palliative care. Over recent months she has used the internet to investigate cryonics: the freezing of a dead body in the hope that there may be a cure for the illness that she had and will be brought back to life at some future time. Mr Justice Peter Jackson heard the case and stated in his judgement that the scientific theory underlying cryonics is speculative and controversial and that there is considerable debate about its ethical implications. Since the first cryonic preservation in the 1960s,the process has been performed on very few individuals, numbering in the low hundreds. There are two commercial organisations in the United States and one in Russia for this form of preservation.She is one of only 10 Britons and the only British child to have been frozen by Cryonics UK , a non-profit organization. Her body was transported to the USA and is being stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen by the Cyronics Institute in Michigan. Read More

Pakistan’s “Last-Ditch Effort” To Eradicate Polio

Michele Goodwin Leave a comment

Allison M. Whelan, J.D.
Senior Fellow, Center for Biotechnology & Global Health Policy, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Guest Blogger

In a previous post, I discussed three possible methods of increasing vaccination and decreasing vaccine refusals in the United States. One of these options was using tort law and allowing lawsuits against parents for refusing/failing to vaccinate their children. The Pakistani government has recently taken it one step further, arresting and issuing arrest warrants for parents refusing to vaccinate their children against polio. Last week,  approximately 512 people, 471 in Peshawar and 41 in Nowshera, were arrested and jailed and arrest warrants were issued for 1,200 more parents for refusing to vaccinate their children.

Currently, the government allows parents to be released from jail and return home if they sign an affidavit promising to vaccinate their children. Despite the fact there is no law requiring polio vaccination, some view the recent crackdown as “a blessing in disguise” for unvaccinated children. This drastic approach responds to high rates of refusal, a contributing factor to Pakistan’s significant number of polio cases. According to the World Health Organization, in the period since March 2014 Pakistan registered 296 polio cases, the most in the world and drastically higher than even the second-highest rate of 26 cases registered by Afghanistan. Why is Pakistan’s vaccination rate so low? For many reasons, including religious beliefs, attacks on medical workers, displacement of individuals due to ongoing military operations, and a lack of trust in health care workers and the vaccine. Read More

Federal Newborn Screening Law Emphasizes Informed Consent

Michele Goodwin 4 Comments

By Allison M. Whelan (Guest Blogger)

On December 18, 2014, President Obama signed into law the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Reauthorization Act of 2014. The Act includes new timeliness and tracking measures to ensure newborn babies with deadly yet treatable disorders are diagnosed quickly. These changes responded to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation that found thousands of hospitals delayed sending babies’ blood samples to state labs.  A primary purpose of newborn screening is to detect disorders quickly, so any delays increase the risk of illness, disability, and even death.

Although a major reason for the Act’s amendments is to address these problematic delays, another important addition to the Act establishes a parental consent requirement before residual newborn blood spots (NBS) are used in federally-funded research. The Act directs the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to update the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (the “Common Rule”) to recognize federally-funded research on NBS as “human subjects” research. It also eliminates the ability of an institutional review board to waive informed consent requirements for NBS research.

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