Florencio P S, Ramanathan E D
Proskauer Rose LLP, New York, NY, USA.
Berkeley Technol Law J. 2001 Summer;16 Suppl:937-77.
Scientists agree on the need for robust public health safeguards to accompany the imminent introduction of xenotransplantation--clinical transplantation of animal tissue into humans. To protect society in the event of emerging infectious diseases, governments must devise a legally effective means of ensuring compliance with such safeguards. Neither consent law, the law of contracts, nor existing public health legislation can adequately enforce such compliance. Consent law serves as a mechanism of communicating the momentary waiver of legal rights, not as a durable enforcement doctrine. Because it would be essential for recipients personally to comply with public safety measures, the law of contracts would also be unable to compel compliance. Existing public health legislation would also likely be ineffective because it would need to be substantially amended to incorporate the heightened powers necessary for the periodic examination of asymptomatic xenotransplant recipients. Xenotransplantation-specific legislation would be a legally effective means of enforcing public health safeguards since it could require conforming behaviors and could impose monetary fines on those recipients who, having benefited from life-saving intervention, fail to comply. This Article argues that legislation implementing a post-xenotransplantation surveillance system should withstand constitutional scrutiny because it would not be discriminatory and because, although it would violate fundamental rights of recipients, such violations would be justified under existing constitutional doctrines.
