Should the Government Insert Itself between Dying Patients and Unproven Therapies? Discussants include: J. Scott Ballenger, Partner, Latham & Watkins; Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Chair, Department of Clinical Bioethics, National Institutes of Health; and Michael F. Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute.
In Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. Eschenbach, terminally ill patients won an impressive victory before a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. That panel ruled that when the government prevents terminally ill patients from accessing experimental drug treatments, it violates those patients' constitutionally protected right to save their own lives. On appeal, however, an en banc opinion from the D.C. Circuit overturned the panel opinion, setting the stage for an appeal to the Supreme Court. Please join Michael F. Cannon, the Cato Institute's director of health policy studies; Scott Ballenger, lead counsel for the Abigail Alliance; and Ezekiel Emanuel, a leading critic of the Abigail Alliance's case as they discuss the economics, ethics, and constitutionality of allowing the state to stand between dying patients and unproven therapies- Cato Institute
Bio
J. Scott Ballenger
Scott Ballenger is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins. Prior to joining Latham, Mr. Ballenger served from 1996-1997 as a law clerk to the Hon. J. Clifford Wallace of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and during the October 1997 Term as a law clerk to the Hon. Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He then served as Senior Counsel to Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, where he worked on David Boies's trial staff and briefing team for the Division's landmark monopolization case United States v. Microsoft.
Since joining Latham in 1999, Mr. Ballenger has focused on appellate and Supreme Court litigation, with an emphasis on constitutional law. He has been the principal author of the merits briefs in five Supreme Court cases - including the winning briefs for the University of Michigan Law School in its landmark affirmative action case Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), and for Arthur Andersen in its successful effort to get its conviction for obstruction of justice overturned, Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696 (2005). Mr. Ballenger has also drafted dozens of amicus curiae briefs, petitions for certiorari, or briefs in opposition to certiorari in the Supreme Court, and many other briefs in the lower federal courts. In a groundbreaking lawsuit against the FDA, Abigail Alliance v. von Eschenbach, 445 F.3d 470 (2006), Mr. Ballenger recently convinced the D.C. Circuit to recognize a new constitutional right of access to experimental drugs for terminally ill patients. He has also extended his United States v. Microsoft experience with complex trial litigation by working on several trial teams in both state and federal court, including Latham's successful defense of Oracle Corporation against the Justice Department, in U.S. v. Oracle Corp., 2004 WL 2006847 (N.D.Ca. 2004).
Michael F. Cannon
Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute's director of health policy studies. Previously, he served as a domestic policy analyst at the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee under Senator Larry E. Craig (R-ID), where he advised the Senate leadership on health, education, labor, welfare, and Second Amendment policy.
In addition, Cannon has worked as a health care policy analyst for Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation in Washington, D.C. Cannon has appeared on CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox News Channel, and NPR. His articles have been featured in USA Today, the New York Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Most recently, Cannon coauthored the book Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel
Ezekiel Emanuel earned his PhD and MD degrees from Harvard University, where his doctoral dissertation received the Toppan Award for the finest political science dissertation of the year. After earning his MD PhD, he was a Fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Dr. Emanuel completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and an Oncology Fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and then joined the faculty at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Before accepting his current position as the Chair of the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health in 1998, Dr. Emanuel was an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
Widely published on the ethics of clinical research, advance care directives, end-of-life issues, euthanasia, the ethics of managed care, and the physician-patient relationship, Dr. Emanuel's articles have appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of American Medical Association, and many other medical and ethics journals. His book, The Ends of Human Life, has been widely praised and received the Rosenhaupt Memorial Book Award by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
Dr. Emanuel served on the ethics section of former President Clinton's Health Task Force, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and the International Advisory Board on Bioethics of the Pan American Health Organization. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, UCLA, and Brin Professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School. He is an oncologist.