Medical doctors have been made political scapegoats for the financial crisis of healthcare and the failed war on drugs in the United States, says author Ronald Libby. In order to combat health fraud and abuse, the government launched tough new laws and guidelines designed to battle rising urban violent crimes, illegal drugs, and terrorism. But, by eliminating safeguards to protect the innocent, those same laws and guidelines also made it far easier for agents and prosecutors to arrest, charge, fine, convict, and imprison physicians. Current witch hunts for doctors now include wiretaps and whistleblowers who get 35 percent of the fines, even before conviction. Under a new doctrine of harmless error a doctor receives no protection against false testimony, Libby explains all of this, offering cases from media reports, personal interviews, and records of trial as examples in this compelling book. Huge law enforcement bureaucracies have been created to target doctors for alleged fraud, kickbacks, and drug diversion. Federal, state, and local police are rewarded for prosecuting doctors and other healthcare professionals, while investigators and prosecutors receive pay raises and promotions, and law enforcement agencies seize the assets of doctors charged with felonies. Libby explains that doctors are prosecuted for billing mistakes, for referring patients to clinics, or treating pain patients with pain-relieving drugs. They receive large fines and long prison sentences, some even harsher than those given common criminals who've committed the most violent offenses. Join Senior Research Fellow Libby, who is also a Professor of Political Science, as he shows us why doctors have been demonized as corrupt and greedy entrepreneurs, how media sensationalizes doctors' arrests, and what unjust prosecution could mean for the future of healthcare.

Describes how and why doctors have become political scapegoats, subject to "witch hunts and commando-style raids" by law enforcement, why society has let this happen and what can be done to end this unjust "war" on doctors

The definitive history of abortion in the United States, with a new preface that equips readers for what’s to come. When Abortion Was a Crime is the must-read book on abortion history. Originally published ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this award-winning study was the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with that monumental case in 1973. When Abortion Was a Crime is filled with intimate stories and nuanced analysis, demonstrating how abortion was criminalized and policed—and how millions of women sought abortions regardless of the law. With this edition, Leslie J. Reagan provides a new preface that addresses the dangerous and ongoing threats to abortion access across the country, and the precarity of our current moment. While abortions have typically been portrayed as grim "back alley" operations, this deeply researched history confirms that many abortion providers—including physicians—practiced openly and safely, despite prohibitions by the state and the American Medical Association. Women could find cooperative and reliable practitioners; but prosecution, public humiliation, loss of privacy, and inferior medical care were a constant threat. Reagan's analysis of previously untapped sources, including inquest records and trial transcripts, shows the fragility of patient rights and raises provocative questions about the relationship between medicine and law. With the right to abortion increasingly under attack, this book remains the definitive history of abortion in the United States, offering vital lessons for every American concerned with health care, civil liberties, and personal and sexual freedom.

Anyone who wants to understand how abortion has been treated historically in the western legal tradition must first come to terms with two quite different but interrelated historical trajectories. On one hand, there is the ancient Judeo-Christian condemnation of prenatal homicide as a wrong warranting retribution; on the other, there is the juristic definition of "crime" in the modern sense of the word, which distinguished the term sharply from "sin" and "tort" and was tied to the rise of Western jurisprudence. To find the act of abortion first identified as a crime in the West, one has to go back to the twelfth century, to the schools of ecclesiastical and Roman law in medieval Europe. In this book, Wolfgang P. Müller tells the story of how abortion came to be criminalized in the West. As he shows, criminalization as a distinct phenomenon and abortion as a self-standing criminal category developed in tandem with each other, first being formulated coherently in the twelfth century at schools of law and theology in Bologna and Paris. Over the ensuing centuries, medieval prosecutors struggled to widen the range of criminal cases involving women accused of ending their unwanted pregnancies. In the process, punishment for abortion went from the realm of carefully crafted rhetoric by ecclesiastical authorities to eventual implementation in practice by clerical and lay judges across Latin Christendom. Informed by legal history, moral theology, literature, and the history of medicine, Müller's book is written with the concerns of modern readers in mind, thus bridging the gap that might otherwise divide modern and medieval sensibilities.

Errors and violations harm many patients: this book explores how to improve both accountability and patient safety in healthcare.

The American criminal justice system is becoming ever more centralized and punitive, owing to rampant federalization and mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. Go Directly to Jail examines these alarming trends and proposes reforms that could rein in a criminal justice apparatus at war with fairness and common sense.

In the United States today, the use or possession of many drugs is a criminal offense. Can these criminal laws be justified? What are the best reasons to punish or not to punish drug users? These are the fundamental issues debated in this book by two prominent philosophers of law. Douglas Husak argues in favor of drug decriminalization, by clarifying the meaning of crucial terms, such as legalize, decriminalize, and drugs; and by identifying the standards by which alternative drug policies should be assessed. He critically examines the reasons typically offered in favor of our current approach and explains why decriminalization is preferable. Peter de Marneffe argues against drug legalization, demonstrating why drug prohibition, especially the prohibition of heroin, is necessary to protect young people from self-destructive drug use. If the empirical assumptions of this argument are sound, he reasons, drug prohibition is perfectly compatible with our rights to liberty.

What is the big deal about cannabis? This book covers everything from botany to the historical uses and common misconceptions of cannabis, with a focus on the political process of prohibition and legalization of cannabis in the United States. Why is marijuana-to which few if any deaths can be attributed-generally banned in the United States, while cigarettes and liquor-which unquestionably kill millions-are currently legal? This question can best be explained through an investigation of the historical context of cannabis in our country. This book documents the long history of marijuana use, the turbulent path of the prohibition of cannabis use, the issues regarding present-day legalization, and the modern implications of both medical and recreational cannabis. It provides compelling insight from multiple academic disciplines, including sociology, political science, economics, medicine, and health, and in particular from the history of the American experience with the criminalization of liquor, gambling, prostitution, and cigarettes. Marijuana Politics: Uncovering the Troublesome History and Social Costs of Criminalization examines the current trend toward the legalization of marijuana in the context of the American experience with particular emphasis on political, social, and constitutional developments in the United States beginning in the 20th century. It compares the trend toward marijuana legalization to Prohibition and U.S. laws regarding the consumption of alcohol and analyzes legal developments in comparable areas such as the regulation of other vices and hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. This book is accessible to both casual readers and academic students and provides a robust understanding of the both historical and modern aspects of the drug itself and legalization, regardless of the reader's individual beliefs on the use of cannabis.

"Who should define what constitutes ethical and lawful medical practice? Judges? Doctors? Scientists? Or someone else entirely? This volume analyses how effectively criminal law operates as a forum for resolving ethical conflict in the delivery of health care. It addresses key questions such as: how does criminal law regulate controversial bioethical areas? What effect, positive or negative, does the use of criminal law have when regulating bioethical conflict? And can the law accommodate moral controversy? By exploring criminal law in theory and in practice and examining the broad field of bioethics as opposed to the narrower terrain of medical ethics, it offers balanced arguments that will help readers form reasoned views on the ethical legitimacy of the invocation and use of criminal law to regulate medical and scientific practice and bioethical issues"--

In recent years, debates have arisen concerning the encroachment of the criminal process in regulating fatal medical error, the implementation of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 and the recent release of the Director of Public Prosecution's assisted suicide policy. Consequently, questions have been raised regarding the extent to which such intervention helps, or if it in fact hinders, the sustained development of medical practice. In this collection, Danielle Griffiths and Andrew Sanders explore the operation of the criminal process in healthcare in the UK as well as in other jurisdictions, including the USA, Australia, New Zealand, France and the Netherlands. Using evidence from previous cases alongside empirical data, each essay engages the reader with the debate surrounding what the appropriate role of the criminal process in healthcare should be and aims to clarify and shape policy and legislation in this under-researched area.