Ineffective Counsel in Death Penalty Cases and the Promise of Therapeutic Jurisprudence.

It is absolutely essential to consider the abject ineffectiveness of counsel in a significant number of death penalty cases involving defendants with serious mental disabilities and how such ineffectiveness is often (scandalously) accepted by reviewing courts. We must also assess all of the concerns raised in this excellent paper by Hiromoto and colleagues through the filter of therapeutic jurisprudence as a way to guide counsel to thoroughly investigate all aspects of such cases (especially those involving defendants with PTSD) and to present substantial mitigating evidence to the fact finders in the sorts of cases the authors are discussing.

Expanding Therapeutic Jurisprudence Across the Federal Judiciary.

A patchwork of drug courts and other problem-solving courts currently exists to divert individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders away from the criminal justice system. We call for a broader implementation of problem-solving courts, particularly at the federal level, that would operate according to the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence (i.e.

Controlling CRISPR Through Law: Legal Regimes as Precautionary Principles.

Since its advent in 2012, CRISPR has spawned a cottage industry of bioethics literature. One principal criticism of the technology is its virtually instant widespread adoption prior to deliberative bodies conducting a meaningful ethical review of its harms and benefits-a violation, to some, of bioethics' "precautionary principle." This view poorly considers, however, the role that the law can play-and does, in fact, play-in policing the introduction of ethically problematic uses of the technology.

Cognitive biases, dark patterns, and the 'privacy paradox'.

Scholars and commentators often argue that individuals do not care about their privacy, and that users routinely trade privacy for convenience. This ignores the cognitive biases and design tactics platforms use to manipulate users into disclosing information. This essay highlights some of those cognitive biases - from hyperbolic discounting to the problem of overchoice - and discusses the ways in which platform design can manipulate disclosure.

The CRISPR-Cas9 Patent Appeal: Where Do We Go From Here?

An appellate court in the United States affirmed the Patent Office's finding that the Broad Institute's patents covering eukaryotic applications of CRISPR-Cas9 was separately patentable over the University of California's (UC) earlier patent application. This does not bode well for future negotiations between UC and the Broad Institute, even as nuclease technology continues to eclipse the original dispute. This perspective explores the appellate decision, where UC goes from here, and what this all means for scientists in the future.

Inferred Allelic Variants of Immunoglobulin Receptor Genes: A System for Their Evaluation, Documentation, and Naming.

Immunoglobulins or antibodies are the main effector molecules of the B-cell lineage and are encoded by hundreds of variable (V), diversity (D), and joining (J) germline genes, which recombine to generate enormous IG diversity. Recently, high-throughput adaptive immune receptor repertoire sequencing (AIRR-seq) of recombined V-(D)-J genes has offered unprecedented insights into the dynamics of IG repertoires in health and disease. Faithful biological interpretation of AIRR-seq studies depends upon the annotation of raw AIRR-seq data, using reference germline gene databases to identify the germline genes within each rearrangement.

Fortune and hindsight: gene patents' muted effect on medical practice.

Introduction: Physicians have long worried about gene patents' potential to restrict their medical practices. Fortune and hindsight have proven these worries exaggerated both in the UK and elsewhere. Neither current nor future medical practices appear to be impinged by gene patents, although they may be subject to future intellectual property disputes.

The CRISPR Patent Landscape: Past, Present, and Future.

The development of CRISPR depends, in part, on the patents-past, present, and future-covering it. As for the past, the origins of the CRISPR patent landscape predate its use as a gene editing technology. Fundamental patents covering CRISPR-Cas9 as a genomic editing system did not first arise until 2012; they sparked the now canonical dispute between the University of California and the Broad Institute.

CRISPR, Patents, and the Public Health.

Patent issues surrounding CRISPR, the revolutionary genetic editing technology, may have important implications for the public health. Patents maintain high prices for novel therapies, limiting patient access. Relatedly, insurance coverage for expensive therapies is waning.

Patent protection for microbial technologies.

Microbial technologies often serve as the basis of fundamental research tools in molecular biology. These present a variety of ethical, legal and social issues concerning their patenting. This commentary presents several case studies of these issues across three major microbiological tools: CRISPR, viral vectors and antimicrobial resistance drugs.

Key challenges in bringing CRISPR-mediated somatic cell therapy into the clinic.

Genome editing using clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated proteins offers the potential to facilitate safe and effective treatment of genetic diseases refractory to other types of intervention. Here, we identify some of the major challenges for clinicians, regulators, and human research ethics committees in the clinical translation of CRISPR-mediated somatic cell therapy.

"Life's hurried tangled road": A therapeutic jurisprudence analysis of why dedicated counsel must be assigned to represent persons with mental disabilities in community settings.

The right to counsel is a fundamental right for individuals facing criminal processes and involuntary civil commitment. However, individuals with serious mental illnesses are subject to many community proceedings (e.g.

Inventive steps: the CRISPR patent dispute and scientific progress: The recent patent decisions about CRISPR tell us a lot about how advances in biology are actually made-and how they are not.

Inventions in scientific research and inventions under patent law do not necessarily mean the same—in particular in molecular biology. [Image: see text]

Patent Law's Reproducibility Paradox.

Clinical research faces a reproducibility crisis. Many recent clinical and preclinical studies appear to be irreproducible--their results cannot be verified by outside researchers. This is problematic for not only scientific reasons but also legal ones: patents grounded in irreproducible research appear to fail their constitutional bargain of property rights in exchange for working disclosures of inventions.

The History of Patenting Genetic Material.

The US Supreme Court's recent decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. declared, for the first time, that isolated human genes cannot be patented.