Do Inmates Have a Constitutional Right to DNA Testing? U.S. Supreme Court Says No.

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Tim WelchBy Tim Welch

Last month, I wrote an entry about the current trend of prosecutors blocking convicted prison inmates from accessing DNA testing on old pieces of evidence stored in police files.  Despite inmate advocacy groups’ claims that DNA tests have exonerated hundreds from false imprisonment, prosecutors are denying the tests to inmates, citing insufficient scope of state laws.  William Osborne, a man currently serving a 26-year sentence for a 1994 rape conviction in Alaska, brought his case all the way to the Supreme Court.  Osborne is seeking a DNA test under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 on police evidence collected during his 1994 rape trial.  But yesterday, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the wrongfully-convicted of America’s prisons.

On June 18, 2009, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Osborne, deciding that convicted prison inmates do not have a constitutional right to obtain DNA tests on old evidence.  As a result, the decision of whether or not to grant inmates access to DNA testing will remain in the hands of state courts and legislatures.  While according to the Chicago Tribune, 47 states have already enacted laws that allow inmates to receive DNA testing in some post-conviction instances, Alaska is not one of them.  Osborne, who won in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, may now face an impossible task in obtaining what he believes to be justice.

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“Generic” Versions of Expensive Biologic Drugs Would Benefit Consumers

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Patrick-BickleyGUEST BLOGGER Pat Bickley

Competition from generic drugs has substantially reduced the prices of many prescription drugs.  However, under current law, the FDA can only apply the expedited testing of a generic designation to certain classes of drugs, generally those that are chemically synthesized, small-molecule products.  Larger and more complex drugs, such as biologics, are not allowed to receive generic designations. Biologics are protein-based and produced in living cells.  They also tend to be much more expensive.  Annual costs can be as high as $48,000 for the breast cancer drug Herceptin and $20,000 for the rheumatoid arthritis drug Remicade.  Manufacturers of biologics, such as Amgen and Genentech, justify these costs as necessary to recoup their substantial investments in developing and gaining approval for the drug.

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“Cheese Please, and No More Exercise Wheels”

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Jake Meyer by Jake Meyer

We've all talked to animals before, but never have the animals talked back.  Recent research makes the possibility of a day when the family dog calls your name, and tells you to sit and shake hands a little more probable.  Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany have placed a human language gene in a strain of mice.

Although there are undoubtedly numerous genes that enable human speech, the replacement of the mice's FOXP2 gene with a human version of the gene had some surprising effects.  The mice with the human FOXP2 gene grew nerve cells with a more complex structure in the basal ganglia–a region of the brain used in language in humans.  The mice also had a new "voice."  When baby mice are separated from their mothers they make ultrasonic whistles.  But in the mice with the human gene, the whistle was a lower pitch.

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Sperm Donors, Products Liability, and the Rights of Children

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<Lori Andrews by Lori Andrews

When I first started working in the infertility field 25 years ago, the AIDS crisis had emerged, but doctors still were not screening sperm donors for the virus.  One doctor actually said to me, “I didn’t screen my wife before I had children with her, why should I screen a sperm donor?”

The infertile couples didn’t see it that way.  There might be lots of reasons to have a child with your spouse, but when couples go to infertility clinics, they are specifically trying to have a healthy baby.  Yet, due to lack of screening, children created through sperm donation have been born with AIDS, hepatitis, cytomegalovirus, and a variety of genetic diseases.  No mechanism exists for sperm banks to learn of the children’s problems and stop using the donor for future pregnancies.

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Resources for European Laws on Patient Rights

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Tim WelchBy Tim Welch

Patient rights continues to be an issue of global concern due to the rapidly expanding field of biotechnology.  As genetics become more involved in the treatment of disease and electronic medical records raise challenges for privacy, the law must evolve to ensure patient protection.

A webpage run by the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Law at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) provides a substantial resource for information about European laws related to patient rights.  The webpage, located at http://www.europatientrights.eu, includes information about the status of the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (Biomedicine Convention) in each EU Member State, as well as individual countries' laws regarding patients' rights to informed consent, information about health, access to medical files, privacy, and use of genetic services.

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Another One Bites the Dust–Second Conspirator Found Guilty in Sale of Body Parts from UCLA

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JulieBergerBy Julie Burger

On May 14, 2009, a jury convicted Ernest Nelson of conspiring to commit grand theft, embezzlement and tax evasion for selling body parts that had been donated to UCLA's medical school to private medical research companies and pharmaceutical companies.  Nelson's alleged co-conspirator in the case, Henry Reid, the former director of UCLA's willed-body program, is currently serving four years after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit the theft. 

According to allegations, Reid provided portions of cadavers to Nelson who then sold them to companies for research.  But it wasn't the mere exchange of money for body parts that was the problem.  Prosecutors stated in 2009 that the defendants' plan unraveled because they had failed to properly fill out paperwork showing that the bodily tissue had been tested and was disease free, raising the suspicions of a state health investigator.  They stated that the companies that provided $1.5 million for the body parts over the course of four years had "legally paid" for the tissue.  Nelson's defense was that UCLA had authorized the sales, but that Henry Reid, the director, had not forwarded the money to the university. 

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Biobanks: Let’s Regulate At Least One Banking Industry

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Jake Meyer by Jake Meyer

Large repositories of biological samples (biobanks) are being collected for medical and scientific research.  Some biobanks are publicly funded, like the UK Biobank, a government plan to create a database of DNA samples of 500,000 volunteers aged 40-69 in order to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of life-threatening illnesses.  Some biobanks are held by private companies, like Genizon Biosciences which contains samples from 47,000 patients who are direct descendants of the original French founders of Quebec (a relatively homogenous population useful for genetics research).  Other biobanks are public-private partnerships, such as the biobank operated by deCODE Genetics, in which the government of Iceland granted deCODE an exclusive license to Iceland's genealogical and medical records.

Scientists think that significant advances in medicine science might be achieved through the study of normal genomic variations across whole populations.  These studies must analyze the whole genome, in contrast to using traditional methods to analyze a single gene.  In order to perform studies of normal genomic variations, large-scale collections of samples are required.  One way to get the large number of samples required for this type of research on the whole human genome is through international collaboration and networking among biobanks.  Commentators Barth Maria Knoppers, Ma'n H. Abdul-Rahman, and Karine Bédard, have suggested that achieving international collaboration and networking among biobanks will require the establishment of international frameworks, standards, and norms. 

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The Eyes Have It: Tighter FDA Regulation of LASIK Surgery

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Lori Andrews by Lori Andrews

What has Tiger Woods got that you don't have?  Ads for LASIK surgery capitalize on his golf swing, his charisma, his fortune–with the subtle implication that you, too, could be a Tiger if only you underwent surgery for nearsightedness.

Over a million people a year undergo LASIK.  But not everyone who submits to the procedure enjoys Tiger's success.  The surgery, laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis, can pose risks. Some patients who have undergone LASIK complain of double vision, blurriness, and depression.  Last year, the FDA held hearings on the risks, including a report of suicide by a man who had an unsuccessful procedure.

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Should Inmates Have Access to DNA Testing? Some Prosecutors Say No

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Tim WelchBy Tim Welch

For prison inmates who are languishing in cells serving sentences for violent crimes they did not commit, a DNA test can be a harbinger of freedom.  That is, if they can get one.  State legislatures have begun to recognize the potential that DNA testing has for exonerating wrongfully-convicted prisoners.  Forty-six states now have laws that enable convicted prison inmates to request a DNA test on evidence related to the crimes they were convicted of in court.  But what sounds like an easy and effective way to reduce the number of wrongfully-convicted prisoners in the United States is meeting significant resistance from prosecutors.

Even though they are increasingly willing to allow DNA testing of an inmate, prosecutors are delaying these tests in some cases by years due to the scope of the applicable state laws.  In reality, DNA tests have exonerated hundreds of wrongfully-convicted people in the United States.  But many of the 46 state laws allowing this type of testing stipulate that the results must be able to prove the prisoners innocence.  Prosecutors will argue that for many types of crimes, simply not finding a DNA match to the inmate is not enough to establish innocence.  For example, in the event of a murder, the fact the blood collected from the scene does not match the perpetrator is not sufficient to prove that the perpetrator did not commit or aid in committing the murder.  This is especially true when a jury had already convicted the perpetrator on the basis of testimony and identification.

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Wheels of Justice Grind Slowly for Havasupai Tribe

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JulieBergerBy Julie Burger

In a remote section of the Grand Canyon about 450 members of the Havasupai Tribe live on tribal lands where they have lived for hundreds of years.  Another 200 members of the Tribe live away from Supai, the village area.  In March of 1990, researchers from Arizona State University (“ASU”) (Drs. Theresa Markow and John Martin) presented the Havasupai Tribal Council with a proposed diabetes study, saying that they would like to collect and use tribe members’ blood for diabetes studies.  The researchers met several times with the Tribal Council, but according to allegations, never revealed they intended to perform research other than diabetes research.  With the Council’s approval, blood samples were collected from members of the Tribe, including children and vulnerable people.  Researchers additionally took handprints from members.  English is not the tribal members’ primary language and many members do not even speak English as a second language.

The researchers did not stop at diabetes research.  They also performed additional research on the samples for schizophrenia, inbreeding, and population migration, and shared the samples with researchers at other institutions.  After discovering the additional research, the Havasupai filed state court complaints on behalf of individual Tribal members and on behalf of the Tribe against ASU and the researchers in 2004.  The Havasupai maintain that the schizophrenia and inbreeding research was stigmatizing and that they would not have consented to the migration research because it conflicts with their religious origin theory.  A member of the Tribe points out that “[the researchers] challenged our identity and our origins with our own blood and without telling us what they were doing.”

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