(Population) Health Law in Theory.

This essay explores the viability of using the population health legal norm developed by Professor Wendy Parmet in her book Populations, Public Health, and the Law as a basis for theorizing health law. Based on the application of five criteria, the essay concludes that a population health legal norm has potential as a framework for theorizing health law, especially in comparison to other proposed health law theories. Yet, its potential turns on the ability of theorists to provide a detailed account of individual rights under a population health framework.

Quarantine Controversy: Kaci Hickox v. Governor Chris Christie.

Nurse Kaci Hickox is among the "Ebola Fighters" honored by Time magazine as its 2014 Person of the Year, having treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone while volunteering with Médecins Sans Frontieres. When she returned to the United States in October 2014, she was quarantined in New Jersey for three days before returning home to Maine under the terms of a negotiated release. A year later, in October 2015, Hickox filed suit in federal court against Governor Chris Christie and New Jersey health officials, claiming that the quarantine violated her civil rights. Her complaint asserts that New Jersey officials lacked the authority to quarantine her because she did not pose a significant risk of transmission. The lawsuit raises important questions about disease-transmission risk, the inability of science to rule out certain theoretical risks, and the state's power to quarantine. It also demonstrates that population health depends on respecting individual liberty and using the best available epidemiological data to set public health policy.

Self-Regulation of Science: What Can We Still Learn from Asilomar?

Can scientists self-regulate effectively? The controversial select agent regulations, the recent implementation of U.S. dual-use research of concern policies, the funding moratorium on gain of function experiments, and the 2014 incidents at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all seem to suggest that the answer is a resounding "no." Yet history tells us that it is feasible. In this comprehensive history of the first iteration of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Recombinant DNA Guidelines, we examine the principles, thoughts, and behaviors that resulted in successful self-regulation of scientific research for the past four decades and how engagement of scientists made it possible. Starting with a willingness on the part of researchers all over the world to pause exciting experiments, and with a genuine concern for public health, the individuals involved demonstrated unprecedented (and thus far never replicated) openness to dialogue with others from different disciplines, the media, and the public.

Institutionally sponsored mediation and the emerging medical trust movement in the U.S.

This essay identifies the bias that institutional sponsorship of medical mediation introduces and the probability that such bias undermines the ability of such mediation programs to generate trust by patients in physicians and health care institutions. Based on data from an emerging medical trust movement in the U.S., the essay argues that institutionally sponsored medical mediation programs are missing an opportunity to reap the economic benefits of promoting trust through the use of classic mediation techniques. It also identifies new tools for measuring trust that have been created as part of the emerging movement, and it explains how those tools can be used to confirm the economic value of classical mediation while remaining free of much of the bias that appears to plague current institutionally sponsored medical mediation programs.