이화여자대학교 법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

Advertising that passes false information as common sense instills a wrongful attitude towards diet supplementary products that actually provides no benefit. Economic deadweights are generated by persistence belief in useless products, and the law has an imperative to disincentivize the false advertising practices. But more important than consumer protection, the practice of false advertising of health products should be regulated for their impact on the general health of the populace.

 

계속 읽기 “The Danger of Advertisements” →

이화여자대학교 법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

Mayo clinic is perhaps the most famous online medical engine that allows input of preset diagnoses to present possible diagnosis. Even though the legal disclaimer exists to say that the website is no replacement for a real doctor and insists on patients taking advice and prescription from doctors, this advice is hard to hear when medical care expenses run too high for a family. Just as people of the time before web-based diagnoses services relied on homeopathy and any old generation-passed treatments for common symptoms such as sore muscles, diarrhea, and yeast infection, online medical advice engines are becoming established as a front-line triage helper who is helpful with rare symptoms, but downright dangerous with rare diseases.

계속 읽기 “Legal Responsibility of Online Medical Advice” →

이화여대 법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

Recent news showed that a hospital in North Seoul used the same needle more than 40 times, causing iatrogenic diseases to spread. This is outrageous. The law is missing clauses on the regulation of limiting reuse of all needles. Whether it be a subcutaneous needle for delivering drugs, or IV lines to sustain chronic patients, common medical education would teach to use needles only once, and that the needle is a biohazard, as we never know what the patient has in his or her blood. A blatant misuse of the lack of law is being overlooked by the current Korean government, and a fast enforcement of rules must be in place. The good thing about needles is that once they are reused, it is very easy to verify under the microscope as shown in figure 1:

Figure 1. Illustration of various needle conditions after reuse

계속 읽기 “Needle Reuse and the Need for Micro-enforcement of the Law” →

이화여대 법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

The nature of antibiotics escapes legal reach in Korea. One of the most striking features of going to the doctor’s in Korea is the sheer number of prescription drugs that flow out even with the most trivial illnesses such as the common cold. Antibiotics used against a viral infection such as the cold is scientifically ill-advised, and what’s more, it is unethical. This stems from the current understanding that our body possesses a microflora that exceeds the number of cells that we could be traced back to the original zygote in the womb by 10 times. With this many co-existing microorganisms in and on us, the use of antibiotics, especially general ones that can target many bacteria that are currently keeping the bad ones at bay. Misuse of antibiotics can cause terrible infections, and even if there are no symptoms, a resistance toward the antibiotics may develop, requiring even more expensive, if not harmful, antibiotics to be used in the case of actual emergencies.

 

계속 읽기 “The Need for Scientific Evidence-based Law” →

이화여대 법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

A swamp has no boundaries, for its edge between water and land is constantly changing according to the level of the water table in the region. Any attempts to draw a swamp on a map will be futile, because it will not represent the constantly shifting edge of the swamp. This is much akin to any attempt to define an individual’s identity today where the boundaries we set as individuals are invaded, pushed out, criticized and introspected more than any other time in history. The role of law in the realm of personal identity is to provide an invisible greenlight to define personal identities anyway people see fit. Since one of the biggest ways we identify ourselves is through physiology, we should have rights to every body part we own, free to change for other parts, and to donate to others. The problem arises when we start assigning certain body parts as belonging more to us than others, thus hindering the process of defining identity, however difficult that may be.
계속 읽기 “The Piecewise Body: Ideas of Personal Identity Reflected the Law” →

이화여대 법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

 

One of the harshest laws regarding medicinal practices have been the use of deceased bodies. As far back as humans have been hunter-gatherers, the recognition of   humans as a collection of organs led to the practice of body-snatching in hopes of gaining extra health by eating an enemy’s heart or their brain. Greeks were especially diligent in leading a thought-movement that would lead to a reductionist approach to viewing the human body to nothing more than organic piping, and that Western tradition has continued to this day as we gather more and more body parts for reuse. Some ethical speculators have renounced such reuse as a mark of profanity against the sanctity of the human body, but in a world of marketable ideas, bodies come cheap, and there is plenty of bodies around.

계속 읽기 “Recycling Body Parts” →

이화여자대학교 법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

Depending on legal definitions of death, when it is legitimate to pull the plug on someone who is not responding to stimuli may shift between legality and criminality. Death is permanent once it comes – and it surely comes for us all – but knowing the exact moment of the end of life is very difficult, both for the one experiencing death and for those around them. This primarily stems from the fact that we are considered one organism, and yet carry with us trillions of cells that can, in their own right, be called autonomous life forms. The death of a human being is difficult, because it involves reducing the human to a mere collection of cells and designating which set of cells more define the multicellular whole than the rest. The amputation of an arm or a leg, for instance, could not be called the death of a human being, but it certainly means the death of thousands of cells on that limb. 계속 읽기 “The Cost of Legally Defining Death” →

 이화여자대학교 법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

Foucault is famous for having brought a critical eye to the mental institutions of history in his “Madness and Civilization”. In the past, he writes, the mad were simply seen as people with wildly different points of view, and while they could not be wholly understood, the people of the Renaissance embraced their differences and protected them in separate housing where they were free to roam naked, both literally and figuratively, through the gardens of tolerance and acceptance. Now, Foucault argues, the “otherization” has ensured the complete separation of the mad from the norm, labeling them as broken, and often keeping them against their will, for they are not seen as willed creatures. 계속 읽기 “The Criminal Use of Mental Illness” →

 이화여대 법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

 

Every epidemic accompanies with it the expediencies of the journalists required to inform the citizens. What better time to get more viewers than dealing with health issues that no one is immune to? The recent MERS outbreak in South Korea is a prime example of a public that was taken in for fools when the virus was exaggerated on the media. Compared to common cold, the contagiousness of the disease was on par, if not less, and the lethality was still far less than more common place contagions such as hepatitis. However, the death count grabbed headlines day and night, and the reporters had their hayday, showing everything from contagious regions to hospitals and specific individuals. Sensationalism must have its limits, and the only sure limit can be set with the law. 계속 읽기 “Accountability of Epidemics Journalism” →

이화여대  법학전문대학원

6기 박유미 (You Mi Park)

 

The recent trends in America for parents to reject vaccination of kids have been shocking. More than 10% of the adult American population with children is refusing to have their kids immunized (Calandrillo, 353). Immunization seems to be a common sense practice to ward off the diseases they are meant to prevent, and the microbiological theory that have been developed since Pasteur discovered penicillin in the nineteenth century have shown time and again the importance of primary exposure for a stronger resistance to secondary exposure. Despite this hard evidence, parents choose to rely on unfounded data that vaccination can cause autism and hence leave their children undefended, unprotected, and unhealthy. 계속 읽기 “Necessary Choice” →