Hastings Cent Rep
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In the early 1970s, Congress considered enacting comprehensive privacy legislation, but it was unable to do so. In 1974, it passed the Privacy Act, applicable only to information in the possession of the federal government. In the intervening years, other information privacy laws enacted by Congress, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, have been weak and sector specific. ⋯ Signaling a new direction in state data privacy and consumer protection law, the California Consumer Privacy Act establishes important rights and protections for California residents with regard to the collection, use, disclosure, and sale of their personal information. The CCPA is certain to spur similar legislation and to affect national and international businesses that collect data from California's residents. Understanding the new law is important for all data-driven industries, including health care.
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A central problem for the international governance of heritable germline gene editing is that there are important differences in attitudes and values as well as ethical and health care considerations around the world. These differences are reflected in a complicated and diverse regulatory landscape. Several publications have discussed whether reproductive uses would be legally permissible in individual countries and whether clinical applications could emerge in the context of regulatory gaps and gray areas. ⋯ K. scientists, in vitro fertilization clinicians, and representatives from regulatory bodies, patient organizations, and other civil societal organizations, as well as fertility companies. Part one of this article explores stakeholder perceptions of possible global developments in heritable genome editing and associated risks and governance challenges. Part two presents a range of policy options that were generated during the workshop in relation to the challenges discussed in part one.
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Vaccination is one of history's most successful public health interventions. Since 2000, vaccination campaigns against measles, which is highly contagious but preventable through the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, have reduced both the global incidence of the disease and measles deaths by 80 percent. ⋯ With more communities below or at risk of falling below the 95 percent immunization rates required for herd immunity-due more and more to vaccine skepticism and declination rather than lack of access-many U. S. states and countries must reappraise their vaccination policies and programs.
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The author replies to a letter to the editor from Felicitas Sofia Holzer concerning Wenner's article "The Social Value Requirement in Research: From the Transactional to the Basic Structure Model of Stakeholder Obligations," in the Hastings Center Report's January-February 2019 issue.
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Brain death, or the determination of death by neurological criteria, has been described as a legal fiction. Legal fictions are devices by which the law treats two analogous things (in this case, biological death and brain death) in the same way so that the law developed for one can also cover the other. ⋯ I will argue that diagnosing brain death as a hidden legal fiction is a helpful way to understand its historical development and current status. For the legal-fictions approach to be ethically justifiable, however, the fact that brain death is a legal fiction not aligned with the standard biological conception of death must be acknowledged and made transparent.