September 2013

The Art of War on Drugs

by Ke M. Huang, UMN Law Student, MJLST Staff

Ke M. Huang.jpgA recent New York Times article addressed the research of a psychology professor at Columbia University that aimed to discredit misperceptions about drug addicts. The article cited Professor Carl Hart saying: “Eighty to 90 percent of people who use crack and methamphetamine don’t get addicted,” Hart continued, “And the small number of who do become addicted are nothing like the popular caricatures. His research showed that, for example, recruited addicts who were given a choice between a dose of crack and $5.00 sometimes chose the money. Findings such as this led Professor Hart to conclude that addicts can make rational economic decisions.

In the Volume 11, Issue 1 of the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology, Eagleman et al. also shed light on drug addiction by offering two additions to drug policy. After presenting an overview of the shortcomings of the U.S. drug policy, and a summary of the modern neuroscientific understanding of chemical dependency, Eagleman et al. suggested that the government should try implementing (1) cocaine vaccines, and (2) neuroimaging feedback to treat drug addiction. The first measure creates on the recipient of the vaccine an immune response to cocaine molecules that can weaken, if not eliminate, the high of the cocaine. The second measure, like biofeedback, allows an individual to view a graphical representation of the activity in a certain area of her brain, and let her practice to control it. Thus Eagleman et al. support a more rehabilitative, rather than retributive, policy to addressing issues of chemical dependency.

As someone who was raised in the country with one of the least criminalized drug policies in Europe–Portugal, I stumbled upon literature that also suggested that a country’s war on drugs does not have to be a hot war. Since 2001, Portugal implemented a drug decriminalization reform. A drug user is not arrested, but referred to a squad often times made up of a lawyer, a social worker, and a medical professional. The squad finds whether the user is addicted. If yes, he may be then referred to a treatment or be penalized, such as being banned from a certain neighborhood or losing a driver’s license. If not, he is unlikely to be sanctioned. About 5% users are brought before the squad the second time in the same year. A 2010 study in the British Journal of Criminology concluded that Portugal’s drug policy reform was quite successful. Teen drug use decreased, law enforcement authorities seized more drugs, and, though adult drug use rates climbed, the rates were lower than the neighboring nations that did not adopt drug policies like those in Portugal.

About 2500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote “the skillful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting.” Similarly, the literature discussed indicates that the war on drugs could be a peaceful fight after all.


Country of Origin Labeling for Food and Pharmaceutical Products

by Daniel Schueppert, UMN Law Student, MJLST Staff

The USDA has recently lifted restrictions on the practice of shipping US Chicken to China for processing, for an eventual return to the US. Under the present regulations, chicken originating from US farms can be shipped to China for processing, then shipped back to the US for sale. This chicken need not include Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) to indicate that it has been processed in China. This change comes in the wake of a years of food safety scares relating to China’s food supply. Although the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) has completed audits of the China’s “poultry processing inspection system” and certified some of the Chinese processing plants and procedures, American consumers have retained some reservations about the safety of chicken processed in China. As it stands, this system leaves consumers in the position of not knowing which country their chicken products have been processed because the Chinese operations are considered a comparable food component to what results from US processing.

This recent action by the USDA clearly raises questions concerning the United States’ food safety, and perhaps security. A sophisticated consumer may nevertheless be able avoid chicken products known to be processed in China, but absent COOL disclosures this may be a difficult task and arguably involve some guess work. This is not necessarily the case with generic pharmaceuticals, an area in which there are substantial parallels to the chicken debate. Some of the concerns raised relating to the quality and safety of chicken processed in China also bring to light the COOL requirements for other consumables like pharmaceuticals. Import screening and labeling for pharmaceuticals, and particularly off patent generics, is a convoluted area of regulatory law where Federal agencies to not always agree. Currently many of the various components of just one pharmaceutical drug are manufactured all over the world and come from a variety of sources. Manufacturing in India, China, and Eastern Europe account for a large part of the market.

The FDA’s main measure on determining the quality of components in generic drugs is a fuzzy spectrum concerning the “bioavailability” of certain chemicals but this measure does not necessarily take account of inert components or varying quality or quantities of active ingredients. Much like chicken, a consumer or regulatory agency would be hard pressed to find a problem with these products until a quality control issue develops and American consumers are put at risk. COOL labeling regarding Chicken and Drugs are developing issues without a clear regulatory action in sight. Stay tuned to the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology for further updates.


Anti-Cyberbullying Efforts Should Focus on Everyday Tragedies

by Alex Vlisides, UMN Law Student, MJLST Staff

Cyberbullying. It seems every few weeks or months, another story surfaces in the media with the same tragic narrative. A teenager was bullied, both at school and over the internet. The quiet young kid was the target of some impossibly cruel torment by their peers. Tragically, the child felt they had nowhere to turn, and took their own life.

Most recently, a 12 year old girl from Lakeland, FL, named Rebecca Ann Sedwick jumped to her death from the roof of a factory after being bullied online for months by a group of 15 girls. The tragedy has spurred the same news narrative as the many before, and the same calls for inadequate action. Prosecute the bullies or their parents. Blame the victim’s parents for not caring enough. Blame the school for not stepping in.

News media’s institutional bias is to cover the shocking story. The problem is that when considering policy changes to help the huge number of kids who are bullied online, these tragic stories may be the exact wrong cases to consider. Cyberbullying is not an issue that tragically surfaces every few months like a hurricane or a forest fire. It goes on every day, in virtually every middle school and high school in the country. Schools need policies crafted not just to prevent the worst, but to make things better each day.

It is incredibly important to remember students like Sedwick. But to address cyberbullying, it may be just as important to remember the more common effects of bullying: the student who stops raising their hand in class or quits a sports team or fears even going on social media sites. These things should be thought of not as potential warning signs of a tragedy, but as small tragedies themselves.

The media will never run headlines on this side of bullying. This means that policy makers and those advocating for change must correct for this bias, changing the narrative and agenda of cyberbullying to include the common tragedies. The issue is complex, emotional and ever-changing. Though it may not make for breaking news, meaningful change will honor students like Rebecca Ann Sedwick, while protecting students who continue to face cyberbullying every day.


The “Loss of Chance” Doctrine after Dickhoff

by Alison Key, UMN Law Student, MJLST Staff

In May 2013, the Minnesota Supreme Court recognized a new cause of action against healthcare providers for medical malpractice. In Dickhoff ex rel. Dickhoff v. Green, A11-0402, 2013 WL 2363550 (Minn. May 31, 2013), Minnesota joined a growing group of states that permit medical malpractice claims for “loss of chance.”

Under traditional principles of tort law, the elements of a tort include existence of a duty, breach of the duty, causation, and injury, all of which a plaintiff must prove to the standard of “more likely than not.” This standard of proof has posed problems for plaintiffs in medical malpractice suits where the patient had less than a 50% chance of survival before the alleged negligence occurred. If the patient is already “more likely than not” going to suffer the injury of death from a condition before the negligence of a physician, it is impossible to argue that any physician conduct, even if negligent, was the but-for cause of the patient’s ultimate death.

Courts across the country have long grappled with this issue, but have struggled to find a solution. From a patients’ rights perspective, states are uncomfortable with the notion that there is virtual immunity from malpractice liability for physicians who begin treating patients after they are already terminally ill. At the same time, courts have been unwilling to hastily depart from traditional principles of tort causation and standards of proof that require a physician to be the but-for cause of the patient’s injury.

States have confronted this issue in a few ways. One is to adhere to traditional principles of tort causation and not recognize a cause of action for a patient who brings a claim of medical malpractice (generally failure to timely diagnose) after an illness was already “more likely than not” the cause of death. This would not necessarily preclude a patient from bringing an action if she had a greater than 50% chance of survival (whose condition will not “more likely than not” cause death) but due to a physician’s negligence, her chance of survival was reduced to below 50%. In such a case, the physician can be said to have caused by his negligence the injury that is “more likely than not” going to cause the patient’s death. This is the approach Minnesota took before Dickhoff.

Another “solution” is the relaxed causation/substantial factor approach. Similar to the way that tort law deals with concurrent causation, some jurisdictions have held that if the physician’s negligence and the patient’s condition are concurrent causes of death, a jury will determine whether the physician was a “substantial factor” in the injury, and award damages accordingly. This acknowledges, but “relaxes,” the causation requirements in malpractice claims with terminally ill patients, permitting recovery for the whole injury.

A final approach is the doctrine of “loss of chance.” Rather than address the causation problems when a patient is already “more likely than not” going to suffer death, the loss of chance doctrine changes the nature of the compensable injury. Instead of regarding the injury as death, the court acknowledges that any loss of chance of survival is a compensable injury itself for which the physician must be held accountable. Under this doctrine, a patient who sees a physician when her illness is already terminal, let’s say 40% chance of survival, would be permitted to recover if the physician’s negligent failure to timely diagnose her injury reduced her likelihood to 30% before treatment was administered. Under the traditional approach, there would be no way to prove that the physician “more likely than not” caused death, because the illness was always 60% likely to cause death. But under the “loss of chance” doctrine, her 10% loss of opportunity to recover is itself the injury for which the patient can recover. This is the position that the Minnesota Supreme Court took in Dickhoff, permitting patients to recover for a “loss of chance” at life.

While this doctrine has intuitive appeal, it is not without its criticisms. While the Anderson opinion rightly champions patients’ rights, physicians in “loss of chance” jurisdictions raise legitimate concerns. Subjecting physicians to liability under this standard is an imposition that no other professional organization subject to malpractice faces, payment for a loss in the likelihood of success. Such a departure from professional malpractice norms should be seriously considered before imposed. Particularly as physicians are faced with limitless options for testing and treatment, all of which may be reasonable, and for all of which another physician is willing to testify that he would have taken a different course of action. Further, many raise concerns about how loss of chance can be measured, and whether juries will be able to evaluate “likelihood” claims from experts to arrive at reasonable conclusions. There is also the effect of rising healthcare costs that often comes with an increase in liability expenses for healthcare providers.

But the Minnesota Supreme Court assures that these concerns are outweighed by adopting the loss of chance doctrine, which “will advance, not undermine, the fundamental purposes of tort law: deterrence and compensation.” There is an argument that these two justifications will not outweigh the concerns of the medical community. Aside from being offended at the notion that a physician needs a lawsuit as deterrence to responsibly treat a terminally ill patient, the issue with a deterrence justification is that most medical malpractice cases claim negligence in diagnosis. In such cases, the physician is unaware the patient is terminally ill and he has “immunity” to liability. Therefore, physicians argue that the deterrence mechanism is insufficient to warrant such an imposition and uncertainty on health law and the practice of medicine as a whole. Further, the “compensation” rationale does not sit well with many physicians who claim that compensating patients for injury and treatment that was likely to occur anyway will be a windfall for the patient at the expense of the healthcare system (the treatment and outcome for 40% likelihood of success is often the same as the treatment and outcome for 30% likelihood of success). The Dickhoff case was remanded back to the district court for further proceedings after determining that “loss of chance” was a legitimate cause of action. Further cases will show how the patients’ rights issues and the physicians concerns with this system will play out.

For further discussion of the “loss of chance” doctrine, see Tory A. Weigand, Loss of Chance in Medical Malpractice: The Need for Caution, 87 Mass. L. Rev. 3 (2002), reprinted here.