Schedule of Classes
Class times for Spring, 2006 have not been released yet.276.65 sec. 1 - Law, Science and Biotechnology (Spring 2006)
Instructor: Pilar Ossorio
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Units: 3
Meeting Time: -
Meeting Location: -
Course Control Number (Non-1Ls): 49849
276.65 Course Description
Law, Science and Biotechnology
This course will survey law, policy and ethics relating to several new and emerging biotechnologies including: stem cells, gene therapy, genetic testing, reproductive technologies and genetically modified foods. An overarching theme of the course is a comparison of the manner in which various institutions–agencies, courts, legislatures, markets–take account of risk and uncertainty relating to biotechnologies. The course is divided into five major topic areas. The first is topic is research with human subjects. We will examine the research regulation and recent litigation arising from biomedical research, and we will follow the law’s evolution in response to new technologies and to new institutional arrangements associated with large-scale bioscience. We will also identify some difficulties of litigating cases arising out of research, and discuss proposed solutions. This emphasis on research reflects the fact that the legal system has engaged with many new and emerging biotechnologies only in the research context; these technologies have not yet been incorporated into marketable products.
The second major topic covered in the course is assisted reproduction. Many new genetic technologies were first applied in the reproductive medicine context. This portion of the course will focus particularly on legal and philosophical problems arising out of prenatal and preconception genetic testing.
The third major topic will be the intersection of property, privacy and human biological materials such as DNA, cells, and organs. We examine privacy and property together because these concepts and areas of the law are often intertwined in people’s views about the use and disposition of human biological materials. For instance, many people believe that they should have property interests in their extracorporeal tissues because those tissues contain private, personal genetic information about them.
The forth major topic is university-industry relations. Here we look at the law and policies controlling the transfer of biotechnology inventions and materials from universities and publicly-funded research laboratories to private firms. We also examine contract and conflict of interest issues arising from private funding of research in public universities. And finally, we look at the agency oversight of publicly funded research–even when human beings are not the subjects of research, there is some oversight of fraud, plagiarism and other research misconduct.
The final topic of the course is agricultural biotechnology, and in particular, genetically modified food. With this topic we return to central questions about which methods and which institutions are best suited to weigh, value and distribute risk and uncertainty.
You do not need a scientific background to understand the material or to excel in this course.
There is a course web page available for this course.
Exam Notes: P+, P
Special Notes: W
Course Category: Technology and Intellectual Property
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Books:
Books for this term are unavailable.
