Legislators and Advocates to Propose a Constitutional Amendment for National Health Care

The Health Law Institute and the Center for the Study of Race and Bioethics (RABE) at the DePaul University College of Law will bring together a team of legal scholars, ethicists, legislators and medical experts to explore some of the central legal and ethical matters people of color face in health care during back to back programs set for March 4 and 5. These include access and delivery and body parts procurement and sales.

As part of the March 5 program, a news conference will be held at noon at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, 930 E. 50th St., where legislators and health care advocates will call for a constitutional amendment to provide national health care. Participating in the news conference will be U.S. representatives Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Danny K. Davis; Illinois State Representative Janice Schakowsky; the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., president of PUSH; and Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The March 4 program, “Precious Commodities: The Supply & Demand of Body Parts,” will be held from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. at Jenner & Block, 330 N. Wabash, Suite 4000. The daylong program, which is co-sponsored by the DePaul Law Review, will examine key legal and ethical issues regarding how America regulates and courts evaluate the supply of and demand for body parts, including sperm, ova, organs and stem cells. The program also will take a close look at the illicit trade in human body parts and examine issues such as the financial incentives raised by an expanding body parts marketplace; how advancements in body parts biotechnology have sparked conflict between bioethics and religion; and the legal and moral problems that are broached when body parts become commodities.

The Honorable Armand Arabian, a retired California Supreme Court Justice, will deliver opening remarks at 9 a.m. Laurie Zoloth, a professor of bioethics, medical humanities and religion at Northwestern University’s Center for Genetic Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, will deliver the keynote address beginning at 11:30 a.m. Both will discus how society should classify organs—as spare parts, objects, commodities or gifts of life.

The March 5 program, “Disentangling Fact From Fiction: The Realities of Unequal Health Treatment,” which is co-sponsored by PUSH and the DePaul Journal of Healthcare Law, will be held from 10a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. The program will consider some of the obstacles minorities face in gaining access to America’s health care delivery system and the disparities in treatment based on race and economics.

A special congressional town hall meeting will open the event at 10 a.m. and will address such issues as using civil rights law as a weapon to combat unequal health care treatment; reparations for past mistreatment in health care and the exploitation of people of color in medical research. Panelists will include legislators Jesse Jackson, Jr., Davis and Schakowsky, along with Stern, who heads the largest health care union in the world. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., will moderate.

Following the town hall meeting, the legislators and advocates will hold a news conference to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will provide for a national health care system. They also will identify health care agencies that substantially underfund facilities that they operate in African-American and Latino communities while providing considerable resources to facilities they operate in white communities.

“These programs are designed to expand the dialogue about two of the most burning health care issues involving people of color today, and to begin to explore solutions that can end some of the disparities minorities encounter in the health care and organ transplantation arenas,” said Michele Goodwin, director of both the Health Law Institute and RABE. “It is only by continuing to expose the glaring inequities that minorities encounter in both of these areas that we can begin to really address the problems.”

DePaul’s Health Law Institute was created in 1984 and is one of the first accredited programs of its kind in the nation to provide students with an extensive curriculum in health care regulation, policy and ethics. It has consistently been ranked among the top 10 health law programs in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. RABE, which was established in 2003, works closely with the institute to address disparities in health care access and delivery based on race, gender and ethnicity through scholarly research and the law.

For additional information or to register for the program exploring supply and demand of body parts, call Jason Greis, DePaul Law Review, at 312/362-8553 or lawreview@depaul.edu. For the health care disparities program contact Michele Goodwin at 312/362-8127 or mgoodwin@depaul.edu.