The Journal of law, medicine & ethics : a journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics
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Firearms were associated with 30, 136 deaths in the United States in 2003. Most guns are initially sold to the public through a network of retail dealers. Licensed firearm dealers are an important source of guns for criminals and gun traffickers. ⋯ We conclude with recommendations for a comprehensive system of state licensing and oversight of gun dealers. Our findings can be useful for the coalition of more than fifty U. S. mayors that recently announced it would work together to combat illegal gun trafficking.
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The use of racial categories in biomedicine has had a long history in the United States. However, social hierarchy and discrimination, justified by purported scientific differences, has also plagued the history of racial categories. Because "race" has some correlation with biological and genetic characteristics, there has been a call not to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" by eliminating race as a research or clinical category. I argue that race is too undefined and fluid to be useful as a proxy for biology or genetics.
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This article addresses three questions concerning the legal regulation of the use of race as a category in biomedical research: how does the law currently encourage the use of race in biomedical research?; how might the existing legal framework constrain its use?; and what should be the law's approach to race-based biomedical research? It proposes a social justice approach that aims to promote racial equality by discouraging the use of "race" as a biological category while encouraging its use as a socio-political category to understand and investigate ways to eliminate disparities in health status, access to health care, and medical treatment.
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In this article, we discuss current legal restrictions governing the use of race in medical research. In particular, we focus on whether the use of race in various types of research is presently permitted under federal law and the federal constitution. We also discuss whether federal restrictions on the use of race in research ought to be expanded, and whether federal policies that encourage the use of race ought to be abandoned.
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Race and ethnicity are commonly reported variables in biomedical research, but how they were determined is often not described and the rationale for analyzing them is often not provided. JAMA improved the reporting of these factors by implementing a policy and procedure. ⋯ Furthermore, some studies continue to use race/ethnicity as a proxy for genetics. Research into appropriate measures of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic factors, as well as education of researchers regarding issues of race/ethnicity, is necessary to clarify the meaning of race/ethnicity in the biomedical literature.