About Me
I am a PhD student in law and technology
(history of science
and science studies) at the
University of California, San Diego.
Last May, I graduated from law school after studying in Seattle and San Francisco. Formerly, I was a systems analyst, systems administrator, and IT manager for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. I used to live in New Orleans (I started law school there first), but a certain hurricane chased me out. As a result, and including summers, I've attended five different law schools. As a law student, I focused on intellectual property, disability and employment law, as well as search and seizure issues.
At UCSD, I am currently working on intellectual property, especially copyright; medicine, including vaccination and public health; scientific expertise; and civil rights, especially as related to the Internet and technology.
With a Pox to You!
The Slow Defeat of Anti-Vaccinators Before 1950
There is a long history of opposition to vaccination that dates back to its earliest uses in Europe and North America to fight smallpox. Opponents have made claims ranging from accusations that vaccination interferes with "God’s will" to claims that it actually contributed to the spread of smallpox instead of preventing it.
In 1967, with the potential elimination of smallpox as a disease within reach, historian Martin Kaufman wrote, "With the improvements in medical practice and the popular acceptance of the state and federal governments' role in public health, the anti-vaccinationists slowly faded from view, and the movement collapsed."
In this paper, I ask: is Kaufman’s opinion an accurate assessment of the historical record? And if it is, how did this transition occur, and what role did anti-vaccinationists play in their own demise? If Kaufman’s assessment was indeed accurate, what lessons can we learn from the growth and demise of pre-1950 anti-vaccination movements that may be applicable to the contemporary vaccination debate?
Transnational Wiretaps and the 4th Amendment
The Fourth Amendment protects Americans within the borders of the United States, but its applicability outside American territory is less clear. I maintain that Fourth Amendment protections should cover wiretap evidence seized abroad, not just that gathered domestically. These protections should apply whenever a prosecutor seeks to admit such evidence in criminal prosecutions in the United States. Such protections are fundamental whenever the government acts to gather or use evidence, whether that evidence was obtained outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States or not.
The practical application of these protections for evidence gathered abroad presents problems, however. For example, can the U.S. exercise any control over the methods used to gather evidence by foreign police agencies? Does the exclusionary rule, meant to inculcate a respect for the Fourth Amendment in domestic officials, have any positive role to play in impacting the behavior of non-U.S. agents? Should we judge admissibility based on another countries laws or should we insist our laws should apply abroad as well? Does it matter if the U.S. initiated the wiretap, or if the foreign country provided the information without direction from the United States? All of these are potentially difficult questions in the context of evidence gathered abroad for use in this country.
Open Source, Open Access, and Open Transfer
One of the most hotly contested issues in the field of intellectual property law concerns the existence, or non-existence, of patent thickets and the extent to which any such bottlenecks may be interfering with research. For decades, scholars warned that problems related to the over proliferation of patent rights would interfere with innovation. In contrast, a growing body of commentary argues that patent thickets are not a problem in modern industries. Either patent thickets do not exist, or if they do, patent thickets do not interfere with the progress of research.
The rhetoric is particularly heated these days because of dramatic changes underway in patent law. Research bottlenecks, or lack thereof, are invoked either in support of or in opposition to such changes, and it is difficult to have a rational discussion when so much seems to be at stake.
Stepping back from the rhetoric a bit, this piece suggests that one can sometimes indirectly observe effects, even if one cannot directly measure the extent of a phenomenon. With this in mind, the piece describes three approaches appearing in modern patent markets that are directed at mitigating the effects of patent thickets. These approaches can be described as Open Source, Open Access, and Open Transfer. From our vantage point, we may not be able to see or to measure the depth of the thicket. We can, however, observe the altered growth patterns that give us some indication of where the problems lie.
