American journal of law & medicine
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This Article proposes a procedure for making decisions to forego life-sustaining treatment for adult, developmentally disabled, public wards who are not competent to make health care decisions. Few commentators or cases address the special considerations involved in making life-sustaining treatment decisions for this patient population. The proposal attempts to fill this gap with a patient-centered process that allows decisionmakers, without prior judicial approval, to forego life-sustaining treatment for adult, developmentally disabled, public wards who have been reliably diagnosed with specific medical conditions.
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Improving global health conditions has been one of the most important and difficult challenges for the world community. Despite concerted efforts by international organizations, like the World Health Organization, great disparities in health conditions remain between developed and developing countries, as well as within those countries. The World Health Organization has achieved some successes through its Health for All strategy; however, it can and should encourage member nations to enact national and international laws to protect and promote the health status of their populations. A comparison to the lawmaking efforts in other areas by international organizations indicates that WHO may have the authority and the means to institutionalize efforts to improve global health conditions.
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Aid-in-dying: should we decriminalize physician-assisted suicide and physician-committed euthanasia?
Recent news stories, medical journal articles, and two state voter referenda have publicized physicians' providing their patients with aid-in-dying. This Note distinguishes two components of aid-in-dying: physician-assisted suicide and physician-committed voluntary active euthanasia. The Note traces these components' distinct historical and legal treatments and critically examines arguments for and against both types of action. This Note concludes that aid-in-dying measures should limit legalization initiatives to physician-assisted suicide and should not embrace physician-committed voluntary active euthanasia.
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The growing problem of physician sexual misconduct has captured the attention not only of the medical and legal communities, but of the public as well. State medical boards, administrative agencies with generous rules of evidence and varying levels of expertise, face the difficult task of responding to patients' allegations of physician sexual abuse. This Article, based in large part on the author's survey of current state medical board practice, reveals an increasing reliance on expert psychiatric testimony to explain the behavior of complainants and accused physicians. Drawing analogies from the use of psychiatric evidence in child sexual abuse cases, the author examines the factors that boards must consider in determining the admissibility of expert testimony in physician sexual misconduct cases, and calls upon states to establish clear evidentiary rules to govern the use of such testimony in administrative hearings.