S.J. Quinney College of Law

January 16 Description
This talk explores the disease of cancer through a legal lens.  It examines how cancer is treated by various legal regimes including administrative law, food and drug law, patent law, and healthcare law, and compares our legal approach to cancer with rising cancer rates in the U.S.

January 23 Description
This presentation explores the structure of Pharmacy Benefit Managers and their role in drug pricing and the pharmaceutical supply chain.    Professor Ruble will provide context and an overview of the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act and the status of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Drug Price Negotiation project.  Professor Mattingly will discuss the economics of drug pricing and impact of Pharmacy Benefit Manager programs.

February 6 Description
Professor Gora will offer insight into the interplay between medicinal cannabis and the health care industry, as well as related information on legal and practical considerations in connection with business opportunities surrounding medicinal cannabis and its by-products.

February 13 Description
Professor Robertson be lecturing on his 2019 book, Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done about It.  That book explores why and how the US healthcare system depends so heavily on deductibles and co-pays, and how that shapes our experience of healthcare and the healthcare we get.  Robertson will share new work exploring how this system can actually harm our health by deterring needed healthcare and it does so even where the law has sought to eliminate copays and deductibles. 

February 20 Description
'Patents over 'Technologies' related to the Human Body under European Patent Law: The Urgent Need for Nuanced Bioethics Scrutiny'
Patents are available in all fields of technology. Moreover, although the human body itself is not patentable under European patent law (Art 5 Biotechnology Directive), many ‘technologies’ that relate in significant ways to how we treat, use and modify our human bodies are patentable. For example, under European law, patentable ‘technologies’ include: ‘technologies’ which can be used to treat the body such as medicine; ‘technologies’ that can alter our human bodies, such as novel neuro-technologies; and isolated elements of the human body such as isolated human genes where patents over such genes can potentially impact how we use these elements of the body.

This presentation develops a novel taxonomy of patentable ‘technologies’ related to human body, and using this, it argues that such patents – and how they are used - can pose significant bioethical implications, including, the potential to impact human autonomy, dignity and bodily integrity interests in certain contexts. Yet, such bioethical issues, and this relationship of patentable ‘technologies’ with the human body is not considered in a routine manner - bar limited exceptions – within the European patent system. Instead, a patent on an engine part is viewed the same as a patent on an isolated element of the human body. Accordingly, greater scrutiny is needed over the bioethical issues posed by patent grant and use over such ‘technologies’ related to the human body.

February 27 Description
For the first time since 1906, everyone in the U.S. is talking about food safety.  With diet-related diseases the number one killer of Americans, obesity rates tripled over the last sixty years, and children as young as 11 suffering from cardiovascular conditions, what and how much we eat is coming under increased scrutiny not only by policy makers and stakeholders, but ordinary consumers as well.  This talk will explore one facet of this public health crisis: the failure of our current food safety system to effectively regulate food components that go beyond a food item’s core ingredients.  Specifically, the discussion will focus on food additives, environmental contaminants, food contact substances, and substances that, ironically, purport to be “generally recognized as safe,” and will argue that the regulation of these hidden components needs to mirror the safety expectations that regulators have for pharmaceuticals and other potent substances with capacity to negatively impact human health.

March 6 Description
Col. Gneshin will be speaking on her own adventures in military health law and what that entailed. She is an S.J. Quinney alumni 2008, a Master of Laws (Military Law), The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School and a Master of Strategic Studies, U.S. Army War College.