April 2001
Lori B. Andrews
Distinguished Professor of Law;
Director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology;
Associate Vice President
Should hospitals
be able to sell your blood to researchers? Should researchers
be able to patent your genes without your consent? Should
insurance companies be able to deny coverage if genetic tests
show you will become ill in 30 years?
These are just a few of the questions Professor Andrews has tried
to answer in her scholarly writing by bringing a social sciences perspective
to the burgeoning fields of health law, genetics and reproductive
technologies.
Her scholarship in the field has been published in such noted scientific
and medical journals as Science and the Journal of the
American Medical Association. To date, she has written nine
books and more than 100 articles, which helped earn her a place
on the National Law Journal's list of the nation's "100
Most Influential Lawyers."
Andrews and her team from IIT's Institute
for Science, Law and Technology are currently drafting cloning
legislation for the U.S. Congress and advising European science
ministers on DNA banking and embryo stem cell research. They are
also working with clinical professors Laurie Leader and Ed Kraus
from the Law Offices of Chicago-Kent
to represent couples whose children suffer from a rare genetic disease.
The case alleges that researchers did not get informed consent from
patients to patent their genes.
As a Distinguished Professor at Chicago-Kent, Andrews sees her
scholarship as an important way to help prepare her students for
the challenges of working in a rapidly changing field.
"In some of my classes, the students are a little uncomfortable
with the idea that, for some issues, there are no answers yet,"
says Andrews. "Then they start to get excited about the prospect
that they may be the lawyers who make those answers. The fact that
my legal research has been published in legal, medical and scientific
journals, and deals with many issues that have not yet been addressed,
sets the tone for my students. They will have a lot to offer when
new issues arise."
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