Law and Biomedicine Colloquium
The Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences presents
The 2026 Law & Biomedicine Colloquium
The Law and Biomedicine Colloquium brings together scholars, practitioners in our community, law students, and law faculty for seminar-style discussion of complex and controversial topics in the field. We are excited to be welcoming distinguished scholars from other law schools, as well as leaders in legal practice in law and the biosciences. Registered College of Law students will receive one hour of credit for participating in the colloquium; other interested participants are welcome to join us. There will be time for questions and answers and casual conversation. Visit the Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences page to learn more.
Free and open to the public. $15 for 1 hour CLE (pending).
To attend in person or to receive the Zoom passcode, please contact Cynthia.
All lectures will be held from 1:30-3 p.m.
Michelle Mello , Professor, Stanford University
When use of a healthcare AI tool leads to patient harm, who is responsible? This session will map the legal and regulatory terrain and offer guidance for assessing and managing the potential liability risk of different AI tools.
Julie Campbell , Assistant Professor, University of Louisville
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is routinely provided at the end of life under default legal rules, despite low success rates and significant risks for medically frail patients, and patients are often expected to opt out without receiving meaningful, timely information. Excluding CPR from the standard informed consent process undermines patient autonomy and contributes to conflict, as the public substantially overestimates CPR’s effectiveness and clinicians frequently avoid these discussions. This presentation proposes amending the Patient Self-Determination Act to require a modified prompted choice model—retaining CPR as the default while mandating education, condition-specific survival data, and decision aids at admission—to promote informed, self-determined end-of-life decisions.
Jacqueline Fox , Professor, University of South Carolina
The OBBBA and more recent announcements by the Trump administration signal substantive changes in how and whether Americans access healthcare in the coming new year. States are facing new administrative burdens while benefits, overall, are threatened with cuts. There are themes one can tease out in these changes, including hostility to people who are not working for employers and a shift in error tolerance, where the goal is to cover fewer people who fit within narrow eligibility criteria, even as the new eligibility proof requirements lead to fewer eligible people getting the benefits. The very concept of the deserving poor is in flux.
Ana Rutschman, Professor, Villanova University
This presentation presents a case study on asthma inhalers as a lens through which to examine the origins of the asthma medication affordability crisis within the legal infrastructure that governs the regulation and commercialization of pharmaceuticals. This infrastructure straddles FDA and patent law, and a disconnect between these legal frameworks—as well as between the regulators themselves—has repeatedly facilitated regulatory gamesmanship by several manufacturers of asthma medication.
Lindsay Wiley , Professor, UCLA
This presentation will explore a wide range of issues at the intersection of bodily autonomy, antisubordination, and evidence-based medical necessity (as a key requirement to trigger collective financing through health insurance) from the perspective of health justice. Health justice is an approach to health law reform that draws on public health ethics and feminist legal theory to identify antisubordination and social solidarity as important public values that health reforms can and should foster. Because the health justice approach emphasizes collective, democratic problemsolving in response to distinctively public health problems, it is not as readily applied to problems of bodily autonomy as the older, more individualistic patient rights approach, which emphasizes private rights in opposition to public interests. Topics will include restrictions on abortion, contraception, gender-affirming care, and conversion therapy, as well as vaccination requirements and the “right to try” potentially lifesaving but unproven treatments as a last resort (e.g., for conditions like COVID, cancer, and AIDS).
Elizabeth Pendo, Professor, University of Washington
Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) use unvalidated predictive algorithms to assess patient risk for substance use disorder (SUD). Overreliance on PDMP information leads healthcare providers to refuse or inappropriately treat people targeted by PDMPs in over one billion patient encounters each year. This Article argues that such PDMP algorithmic discrimination can be challenged under federal antidiscrimination law — Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act -- as disability discrimination. The Article recommends strengthening the 2024 Section 1557 final rule on clinical-decision algorithms, harmonizing existing antidiscrimination protections, and improving enforcement to protect vulnerable patients from algorithmic discrimination.
Govind Persad, Associate Professor, University of Colorado
Health insurance affordability is on Americans’ minds—and at the center of America’s political debates. In late 2025, the federal government shut down for over a month as Congress fought over whether to continue the expanded premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace plans. After the shutdown ended without an agreement to extend subsidies, many households faced premium spikes that forced them into plans with exorbitant deductibles or caused them to drop coverage entirely.
This project traces how a confluence of legal choices—the ACA’s original “subsidy cliff,” which abruptly cut off assistance for households above 400% of the federal poverty level, and the 2017 repeal of the individual mandate—produced the Marketplace affordability crisis. It then evaluates the three principal responses now on the table.
Previous Law & Biomedicine Colloquiums
2025 Colloquium
The Business of Cancer
Daniel Aaron, Associate Professor, University of Utah
Prescription Drug Pricing: Shining light onto a black hole
Jim Ruble, Executive Dean, University of Utah and T. Joseph "Joey" Mattingly II, Associate Professor, University of Utah
The World of Emerging Substances in Healthcare: Rise in Interest of Use of Ketamine, Cannabis and Psychedelics as Emerging Therapies
Lisa Gora, Esq, Partner, Epstein Becker, New Jersey
Killer Copays
Christopher Robertson, Professor, Boston University
Considerations in Patents on Human Tissue
Aisling McMahon, Professor, Maynooth University (Ireland)
Beyond Ingredients: The Many Hidden Additives in Our Food and FDA’s Failure to Regulate Them
Katya Cronin, Professor, George Washington University
Adventures in Military Health Law
Mary Jo Gneshin , Lt. Col., USAR Legal CMD (USA)
The Rise and Risks of Menstrual Tracking Apps
Leah Fowler, Professor, University of Houston
2024 Colloquium
Variation in Data Sharing Practices and Privacy Gaps in US Hospitals and Health Systems
Brian Jackson, Adjunct Professor, University of Utah
Removing Insult From Injury: Medical Negligence and Access to Justice
Edward Havas, President, Dewsnup King & Olsen
Genetics and Privacy in the Criminal Legal System
Natalie Ram, Professor of Law, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
Non-Traditional Law in Health Care
Meghan Smart , Director of Quality & Risk, Mountain View Hospital
The Re-Emergence of Antitrust in Health Law
Thomas Greaney, Research Professor, University of California San Francisco School of Law
Maintaining Corporate Compliance in a Changing Healthcare Landscape
Travis Walker, Director, Elevance Health
Value-Based Care Models in Multi-Specialty Group Practice
Mary Squire, General Counsel, Revere Health
EMTALA's Reach - Current Legal Considerations Post Dobbs
Stephanie Westermeier, General Counsel, Saint Alphonsus Health System & Managing Counsel, Trinity Health
Mifepristone in the Courts
Jordan Paradise, Georgia Reithal Professor of Law and Co-Director, Beazley Institute for Health Law & Policy, Loyola University Chicago School of Law
2022 Colloquium
(Mis)conceiving Bodies and Minds: Medical Models of Disability and the ADA
Leslie Francis, S.J. Quinney College of Law
Representing Hospitals in a Pandemic
Kristy M. Kimball and Blaine Benard, Holland and Hart
Collective Cognitive Capital
Emily Murphy, UC Hastings Law
The Role of Law and Policy in Advancing Disability Health Justice
Elizabeth Pendo, Saint Louis University School of Law
Navigating the Waters of Vaccination Mandates
Greg Matis, Intermountain Healthcare
Remote Reproductive Rights
Rachel Rebouche, Temple University School of Law
'In the Public Interest' - University Technology Transfer and the Nine Points Document – An Empirical Assessment
Jorge Contreras, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Intersection of Government Health Regulation, IP, Trade, and Privacy Enforcement
Jared J. Braithwaite and Alexis Juergnes, Foley & Lardner
2021 Colloquium
Not So Private
Stacey Tovino, University of Oklahoma
The Critical Nature of Social Ties in COVID19 and other Disasters
Daniel Aldrich, Northeastern University
The PrEP Penalty
Doron Dorfman, Syracuse University College of Law
The Open COVID Pledge: Design, Implementation and Preliminary Assessment of an Intellectual Property Commons
Jorge Contreras, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Discriminating among discriminations? Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act
Leslie Francis and Teneille Brown, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Hot Topics and Emerging Issues in Privacy
Delight Roberts, Senior Advisor, Microsoft, Technology and Research
Women Don't Get AIDS, They Just Die From It": Feminist Politics in Pandemics
Aziza Ahmed, Northeastern University
Passports of Privilege
Seema Mohapatra, Indiana University
2020 Colloquium
The Patent Cliff for Biologics
Ana Santos Rutschman, St. Louis University School of Law
Gray Matters: comparing the criminal justice and public health use of neuroscience to predict violence
Teneille Brown, S.J. Quinney College of Law
Forensic Science and DNA Testing: Past, Present and Future
John Butler, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
January 29, 2020 –
Derek Bambauer, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law
Citizen Bioscience and its Rewards
Jorge Contreras, S.J. Quinney College of Law
February 12, 2020 –
Lowell Brown, Arent Fox Los Angeles
A Theory of Genetic Interests
Yaniv Heled, Georgia State University College of Law
One Child Town: Making a Health Care Case for Saving Rural America
Elizabeth Weeks, University of Georgia School of Law