(2013). An Unbiased Response to the Open Peer Commentaries on “Does Consent Bias Research?”. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. W1-W4. doi: 10.1080/15265161.2013.769824.
Boehl Chair of Law and Medicine and Director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law, University of Louisville School of Medicine, 501 East Broadway # 310, Louisville, Kentucky 40202, USA. Tel.: 502 852 4980; Fax: 502 852 4963; Email: mark.rothstein{at}louisville.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract In his article in this issue, Daniel Goldberg advocates a broad definition of public health and expressly rejects the narrow definition of public health I proposed in a (...) 2002 article. Goldberg asserts that public health should include all of the root causes of ill health in populations. Such a definition, however, would include within public health war, famine, crime, illiteracy and numerous other conditions on which public health professionals and agencies lack the resources, expertise and public support to act. The appropriate definition explicitly recognizes that public health is a legal term of art referring to specifically authorized activities by public officials to protect, promote and improve population health. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)
Each year individuals are required to execute millions of authorizations for the release of their health records as a condition of employment, applying for various types of insurance, and submitting claims for benefits. Generally, there are no restrictions on the scope of information released pursuant to these compelled authorizations, and the development of a nationwide system of interoperable electronic health records will increase the amount of health information released. After quantifying the extent of these disclosures, this article discusses why it (...) is important to limit disclosures of health information for nonmedical purposes as well as how it may be possible to do so. (shrink)
: Can passing antidiscrimination laws ever be a bad idea? Yes, if broad policy reform is abandoned in favor of genetic-specific legislation. But in spite of its serious flaws, both in concept and in practice, genetic-specific legislation is sometimes worth passing anyway—sometimes a bad idea is reasonable.
