Legal Implications of Physical Examinations

With the new national emphasis on the prevention of occupationally incurred disease, legislative constraints have been placed in connection with the medical examination of employed persons at health risk. Concurrently, there is mandated a system of communication to the worker of the significant clinical findings encountered on his physical and laboratory inventories.     

Some Legal Implications of the Precautionary Principle: Improving Information-Generation and Legal Protections

In creating a legal agenda in service of the Precautionary Principle, the idea of precaution requires more inventories and better monitoring of the condition of public and workforce health than at present. Rectifying problems of the past to better serve the aims of precaution will require more affirmative pre-market and much more post-market knowledge-generation by those who create and use potentially toxic substances, improved pre-market review of substances, better responses to early warnings, and quicker protective post-market responses to evidence of toxicity. This paper conceptualizes a model pre-market screening law to highlight the need for primary prevention measures and to provide philosophic ideas for improving post-market laws and addressing a large universe of existing substances that have been poorly characterized. Although retrospective personal injury law does not have good mechanisms for precaution, even this can be more protective than it is at present by enhancing causes of action for reasonable fear of disease and medical monitoring, and moving to create new causes of action for failure to develop and disseminate information needed to assess the toxicity of substances.     

Postpartum Sterilization

Postpartum sterilization in California is characterized by an absence of legal definition, by variations in the practices within communities and by differences of opinion as to the merits of alternative procedures. In one institution there seems to be good reason to stress postpartum tubal sterilization as being a safe and effective method of dealing with a group of patients for whom subsequent pregnancies carry a high risk. In other hospitals sterilization policies will vary according to local circumstances and needs.