Law and 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 four distinguished scholars from other law schools in the region, as well as leaders in legal practice in law and the biosciences. Registered students at the College of Law will receive one hour of credit for participating in the colloquium; other interested participants are welcome to join us. Visit the Center web page to learn more about the Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences. Search for upcoming Colloquium events »

2019 Law and Biomedicine Colloquium video archive

January 9, 2019
Medicalization and the New Civil Rights.
Craig Konnoth, Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado Boulder Law School

January 16, 2019
Disaggregating Disasters
Lisa Grow Sun, Professor of Law, Brigham Young University Law School

January 23, 2019
The Problem of Disclosing Medical Errors in the CANDOR Program
Anne Armstrong, General Counsel Intermountain Healthcare

January 30, 2019
The Pick-and-Shovel Play: Bioethics of Gene-Editing Vector Patents
Jacob S. Sherkow, Professor of Law, New York Law School

February 6, 2019
Scott Smith, Associate General Counsel, University of Utah, Medical Marijuana.

February 13, 2019
Data Privacy as a Civil Right
Barbara Evans, Mary Ann & Lawrence E. Faust Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cullen College of Engineering, UH, Director, Center on Biotechnology & Law.

February 20, 2019
Dead Letters and Stem Cell Markets: Can Consumer Protection Law Combat the Challenge of Unproven Stem Cells
Ubaka Ogbogu, LLB, BL, LLM, SJD, Katz Research Fellow, Faculty of Law, University of Alberta, Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Alberta

February 27, 2019
Marc Rinehart, Director, Conflict of Interest Office, University of Utah, Financial Conflicts of Interest in Academic Research.

2018 Law and Biomedicine Colloquium video archive

February 28, 2018
Nicholson Price – Drug Approval in a Learning Health System
Nicholson Price is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. Before joining Michigan Law, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. He holds a PhD in Biological Sciences and a JD, both from Columbia, and an AB from Harvard. He clerked for the Honorable Carlos T. Bea on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was then appointed as an Academic Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Read more »

February 21, 2018
Nicolas P. Terry – Regulatory Challenges of Healthcare’s Al Tsunami
Nicolas Terry is the Hall Render Professor of Law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law where he serves as the Executive Director of the Hall Center for Law and Health. He teaches “Introduction to Health Care Law & Policy,” “Healthcare Quality & Safety,” and “Health Information Technology & Privacy.” Educated at Kingston University and the University of Cambridge, Professor Terry began his academic career as a member of the law faculty of the University of Exeter in England before joining the faculty at Saint Louis University School of Law. Read more »

February 14, 2018
Amelia Rinehart – Multiplex Technology Transfer
Professor Rinehart joined the faculty in 2010 following two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Florida State University. Prior to entering the legal academy, she practiced law for several years at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe L.L.P. in New York, and Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrère & Denègre L.L.P. in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she specialized in intellectual property litigation, procurement, and counseling. Professor Rinehart is a registered patent attorney and her scholarship focuses on patent law and theory. Read more »

February 7, 2018
Jeffrey R. Botkin – Should we disclose research results to participants? Ethical, legal, and regulatory challenges in achieving transparency
Dr. Botkin is a Professor of Pediatrics, Chief of the Program in Medical Ethics and Humanities, and Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Utah. At the U of U, he provides oversight for the IRB, Conflict of Interest policy and research misconduct, among other responsibilities. He received his undergraduate degree at Princeton University, a Masters in Public Health at Johns Hopkins and an MD from the University of Pittsburgh. His research is focused on the ethical, legal, and social issues in human genetics. Read more »

January 31, 2018
Robert Harrison – Ethics and Compliance as the New Regulatory Practice: Personal and Professional Challenges
Robert R. Harrison is a partner at Kimball Stilling & Harrison in Salt Lake City, Utah, where his practice focuses on health care regulatory compliance and ethics. Robert completed his undergraduate education at the University of Richmond, earned a Master of Health Administration from the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University, and graduated from the Saint Louis University School of Law with an Honors Certificate in Health Law from the Center for Health Law Studies. Read more »

January 24, 2018
Henry T. Greely – Genome Editing: From Babies to Mosquitoes and Beyond!
Henry T. (Hank) Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University. He specializes in ethical, legal, and social issues arising from advances in the biosciences, particularly from genetics, neuroscience, and human stem cell research. He is President of the International Neuroethics Society; directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Program on Neuroscience in Society; chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research; and serves on the Neuroscience Forum of the National Academy of Medicine; the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of the National Academy of Sciences; and the NIH BRAIN Initiative’s Multi-Council Working Group whose Neuroethics Division he co-chairs. Read more »

January 17, 2018
Matthew Jennejohn – Disrupting Relational Contracts
Matthew Jennejohn joined the BYU Law faculty in July 2013. He teaches and writes on topics relating to contracts, innovation, and corporate governance. Most recently, his primary research project has examined how new forms of collaborative contracting have emerged to structure innovative activity across firms, and how legal institutions should respond in turn. Before coming to BYU, Professor Jennejohn practiced for several years in the New York office of Shearman & Sterling LLP, where his practice focused on the multi-jurisdictional defense of cross-border M&A transactions and other competition-related issues. Read more »

January 10, 2018
Elizabeth D. Winter – Patient Privacy and Law Enforcement Access
Elizabeth Dolan Winter is Vice President and General Counsel for University of Utah. Liz specializes in health law, health policy, employment law, medical staff issues, research compliance, and faculty and student issues. She advises University and Health Sciences leaders including the President’s Executive Leadership Team, the University of Utah Health Sciences Executive Committee, the University of Utah Board of Trustees, Hospital Board, and Medical Group. She enjoys working with groups and committees on strategies to creatively solve problems. Before her appointment as Vice President and General Counsel, Liz served as Deputy General Counsel for the University and Chief Counsel for the University of Utah Health Sciences. Read more »

2017 Law and Biomedicine Colloquium video archive

March 1, 2017
Liza Vertinsky – Alternative Business Forms for Companies in Healthcare Markets
Liza Vertinsky is an Associate Professor at Emory School of Law. She came to Emory in 2007 after a decade of legal practice focusing on intellectual property transactions. Her areas of expertise include intellectual property, innovation, the intersection of IP and global health, and law and economics. Her research program is motivated by a deep interest in how legal rules – particularly patent law and contract law – influence the ways in which individuals and groups organize their economic activities. She is particularly interested in exploring the institutional environments within which alternative forms of intellectual production take place, with a focus on biomedical innovation and innovations in global health. Read more »

February 22, 2017
Katherine L. Watson – The Ethics of Abortion and the Law of Abortion: How Much Must They Overlap?
Katherine L. Watson is an Associate Professor of Medical Education and Obstetrics and Gynecology, Northwestern University. Watson has been an award-winning teacher of bioethics, medical humanities, and law to medical students and graduate students at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and a member of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital Ethics Committee, for over a decade. Read more »

February 15, 2017
Teneille Brown – Mental Illness: Character, Habit, or Physical trait?
Brown’s research is highly interdisciplinary, and spans a wide range of issues at the intersection of law, biotechnology, medicine, and ethics. She is currently researching the cognitive science of decision-making and how this may inform the Federal Rules of Evidence. She is also pursuing work generally in contemporary issues related to law and the biosciences: the regulation of neurodevices, how neuroscience and genetics may inform legal notions of personhood or intent, and the relevance of neuroscience and genetics evidence at sentencing. Read more »

February 8, 2017
L. Rex Sears – The Law of Life
Rex Sears is a Registered Patent Attorney and Shareholder at Maschoff Brennan. He primarily represents clients in complex business and intellectual property disputes, including patent, trade secret, trademark, trade dress, and copyright, as well as securities, antitrust, real estate, false advertising, unfair business practice, tortious interference, and contract disputes. Many of his clients are companies in technology-intensive fields, including computer hardware and software, payment system security, and pharmaceuticals, or exercise equipment designers and manufacturers, among others. Read more »

February 1, 2017
Dan Burk – Alice in Chains: The State of Biotechnology Patenting
Dan L. Burk is Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, where he is a founding member of the law faculty. An internationally prominent authority on issues related to high technology, he lectures, teaches, and writes in the areas of patent, copyright, electronic commerce, and biotechnology law. Read more »

January 25, 2017
Suzette Goucher – Challenges to Understanding the Standard of Care: Perspectives of a Risk Manager
Suzette Goucher, JD, RN, Director Risk Management, University of Utah Hospital & Clinics. Goucher was previously a Shareholder at Strong & Hanni in Salt Lake City, UT, where she had over a decade of experience representing physicians, clinics, hospitals and other health care providers in various medical malpractice litigation matters. She became the Director of Risk Management at the University of Utah in 2015. Read more »

January 18, 2017
Dave Gessel – The Future of Health Care Law in Utah and the United States
Dave Gessel serves as the Executive Vice President at the Utah Hospital Association (“UHA”). He has previously served as the Vice President of Government Relations and Legal Affairs for UHA. He has also worked as an attorney for a major Utah law firm as well as Legislative Director for a U.S. Congressman. Gessel has also been actively involved in a number of federal, state and local political campaigns. Read more »

January 11, 2017
Stephanie Bair – Neuroplasticity and Dynamic Rationality: Implications for Advertising Law and Autonomy
Stephanie Bair is an associate professor of law at BYU Law School. Bair’s research focuses on mind sciences, innovation, and the law. She is particularly interested in applying empirical work in psychology and neuroscience to current legal and policy challenges in intellectual property law, public health law, criminal law, and other areas. Read more »

2016 Law and Biomedicine Colloquium

Monday, January 11
Lessons from Alcatraz about “Rights” to Medical Care
L. Rex Sears (Maschoff Brennan Laycock Gilmore Israelsen & Wright)
Until it closed in 1963, inmates entering the federal prison on Alcatraz received a handbook of rules and regulations explaining, in part: “You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else that you get is a privilege.” Even at our harshest penal institutions, inmates had (and have) a recognized right to healthcare. What does that mean for the rest of us?

Monday, January 25
Privacy v. Research in Big Data
Jane Bambauer (University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law)

Monday, February 1
Health Care Transition to Shared Risk Integration
Doug Hammer (Intermountain Healthcare)
The ACO Handbook – A Guide to Accountable Care Organizations

Monday, February 8
Set-Shifting to the New Biologics System
Erika Lietzan (University of Missouri School of Law)

Tuesday, February 16
What if your neighbors can’t afford your cure? Ethical and economic challenges in personalized medicine
Jennifer Danielson (Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah)

Monday, February 22
Robert Cook-Deegan (Duke University, Sanford School of Public Policy)

Monday, February 29
Can the Law Do Anyting to Reduce Medical Error?
Michael Saks (Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law)

Suggested Readings:
James, A New Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care, 9 J. Patient Safety 122 (2013).
Votruba & Saks, Medical Adverse Events and Malpractice Litigation in Arizona: By the Numbers, 45 Ariz St. L. J. 1537 (2013).
Hyman & Silver, Medical Malpractice Litigation and Tort Reform: It’s the Incentive, Stupid, 59 Vanderbilt L. Rev. 1085 (2006).
Paik et al., The Receding Tide of Medical Malpractice Litigation Part 1: National Trends, 10 J. Empirical Legal Studies 612 (2013)

Monday, March 7
Kenneth Chahine (Ancestry.com and University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law)

2015 Law and Biomedicine Colloquium

Monday, January 12
Alleged Error in the Andrology Lab — Legal and Ethical Considerations in Crisis Management
Liz Winter, Senior Deputy General Counsel/Chief Counsel HSC, University of Utah

Suggested Reading:
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20776046,00.html
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ut-supreme-court/1289391.html
http://healthcare.utah.edu/community-lab-facts/Report%20Final%20Signed%20Redacted%20April%2021%20.pdf

Monday, January 26
Knowledge, Commons, Genomic Data, and the Advancement of Science
Jorge Contreras, Associate Professor of Law, University of Utah

Monday, February 2
Great Expectations: The Promise and Challenge of Personalized Medicine
Benjamin Jackson, VP Legal Affairs, Myriad Genetics

Monday, February 9
Drugs, the Law, and Practicing Justice
William J. Stilling, Shareholder at Parsons Behle & Latimer

Tuesday, February 17
Justice in Healthcare for High-Risk & Disabled Individuals: The Principle of Proportionate Benefit
Talha Syed, Assistant Professor Law, UC Berkeley School of Law

Monday, February 23
Genomic Malpractice
Gary Marchant, Regents’ Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Center for Law, Science & Innovation, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University

Monday, March 2
Cybersecurity in the Health Care System
Derek Bambauer, Professor of Law, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law

Monday, March 9
Intellectual and Regulatory Property
Anna Laakmann, Assistant Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School

Suggested Reading:
Intellectual and Regulatory Propery